NASA’s Crew-10 mission marks the long-awaited return of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams after being stuck for nine months on the International Space Station.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule transported four astronauts to the International Space Station as part of a NASA crew-swap mission, paving the way for the return of two NASA astronauts stranded for nine months.
The Crew-10 astronauts’ SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS at 12:04am ET (04:04 GMT) on Sunday about 29 hours after launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
They were welcomed by the station’s seven-member crew, which includes Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – veteran NASA astronauts and retired Navy test pilots who have remained on the station since June.
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth. Their prolonged stay was significantly longer than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of roughly six months.
But it is much shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio on board the ISS in 2023, or the world record held by Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days on board the Mir space station.
Otherwise a routine crew rotation flight, the Crew-10 mission is a long-awaited first step to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth – part of a plan set by NASA last year that has been given greater urgency by President Donald Trump since he took office in January.
Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to depart the ISS on Wednesday as early as 4am ET (08:00 GMT), along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Hague and Gorbunov flew to the ISS in September on a Crew Dragon craft with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams, and that craft has been attached to the station since.
The Crew-10 crew, scheduled to stay on the station for roughly six months, includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian astronaut Kirill Peskov.