The Dragon carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and the Russian Area Company’s Alexander Gorbunov will stay on the house station till February, turning what ought to have been a weeklong journey for Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore right into a mission lasting greater than eight months.
Two NASA astronauts had been pulled from the mission to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.
Welcome, #Crew9! After floating by means of the Dragon’s hatch, our new arrivals be part of the crew aboard the @Space_Station. They’ll spend 5 months conducting @ISS_Research and upkeep on the orbiting lab. pic.twitter.com/DJX7f9vxlg
— NASA (@NASA) September 29, 2024
NASA likes to exchange its station crews each six months or so. SpaceX has supplied the taxi service for the reason that firm’s first astronaut flight in 2020. NASA additionally employed Boeing for ferry flights after the house shuttles had been retired, however flawed software program and different Starliner points led to years of delays and greater than USD 1 billion in repairs.
Starliner inspections are underway at NASA’s Kennedy Area Middle, with post-flight evaluations of information set to start this week.
LIVE: Our #Crew9 mission arrives on the @Space_Station. Docking of their @SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft is predicted at 5:30pm ET (2130 UTC), with hatch opening at roughly 7:15pm ET (2315 UTC). https://t.co/ALa6kUF98N
— NASA (@NASA) September 29, 2024
“We’re a good distance from saying, ‘Hey, we’re writing off Boeing’,” NASA’s affiliate administrator Jim Free stated at a pre-launch briefing.
With the arrival of two new astronauts, the 4 crew members who’ve been aboard the house station since March are set to return to Earth in simply over per week aboard their SpaceX capsule. Their return was delayed by a month on account of problems with the Boeing Starliner capsule.
