CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A new crew launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday night, intended to relieve two NASA astronauts whose mission has been unexpectedly extended to nine months.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are awaiting the arrival of their replacements via SpaceX before they can return to Earth. The new crew is scheduled to arrive late Saturday night.
NASA has planned an overlap between the outgoing and incoming crews to ensure a smooth handover of responsibilities and updates on the orbiting laboratory. Following the handover, Wilmore and Williams are slated to undock and splash down off the coast of Florida next week, weather permitting.
Wilmore and Williams will be returning with the astronauts who arrived on a SpaceX rescue mission last September. Two seats on the return flight were reserved for them.
The new crew, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, consists of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers (both military pilots), Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov (both former airline pilots). They will remain on the ISS for a typical six-month stay, after which Wilmore and Williams will be able to return home.
“Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher,” McClain remarked shortly after liftoff.
Wilmore and Williams, serving as test pilots for Boeing’s Starliner capsule, had initially anticipated a brief stay of about a week after launching from Cape Canaveral on June 5. However, helium leaks and thruster issues during their Starliner mission to the ISS led to an extended investigation by NASA and Boeing.
Due to safety concerns, NASA decided to have Starliner return to Earth without a crew last September. Wilmore and Williams were then reassigned to a SpaceX flight scheduled to return in February. Their return was further postponed due to required battery repairs on SpaceX’s new capsule. To expedite the process, SpaceX opted for a previously used capsule, rescheduling Wilmore and Williams’ return for mid-March.
Their unexpectedly long mission gained further attention when President Donald Trump and SpaceX’s Elon Musk pledged to expedite their return, attributing the delays to the previous administration.
Wilmore and Williams, both retired Navy captains and experienced ISS residents, have consistently expressed their support for NASA’s decisions. They have played a key role in maintaining the station, addressing issues like a broken toilet, tending to plants, conducting experiments, and even performing a spacewalk together. Williams has also set a new record for women with nine career spacewalks, accumulating the most time spent spacewalking.
A hydraulics issue caused a delay in Wednesday’s initial launch attempt. The concern involved one of the two clamp arms on the Falcon rocket’s support structure, which needs to tilt away before liftoff. SpaceX resolved the issue by flushing the arm’s hydraulics system to remove trapped air.
The extended stay has been particularly challenging for their families – Wilmore’s wife and two daughters, and Williams’ husband and mother. Beyond reuniting with their loved ones, Wilmore, a church elder, is eager to resume in-person ministering, and Williams looks forward to walking her two Labrador retrievers.
“We appreciate all the love and support from everybody,” Williams stated in a recent interview. “This mission has brought a little attention. There’s goods and bads to that. But I think the good part is more and more people have been interested in what we’re doing” with space exploration.
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