Starliner astronauts to return home after Falcon 9 arrives at ISS

The Crew-10 capsule, carrying four new astronauts, docked with the ISS on Saturday evening and will return to Earth with the original Starliner crew on Wednesday.

It comes after the initial Falcon 9 launch on Thursday was postponed due to a hydraulic system issue that was subsequently fixed.

The trip home will end one of the most high-profile incidents in NASA’s recent history, after it decided to return the Boeing-made spacecraft uncrewed following a string of technical problems.

The decision meant the two astronauts onboard – Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams – would have spent nine months in space despite initially planning to be on the ISS for just one week when Starliner blasted off in June last year.

The new Crew-10 mission launched at 7:03 pm EDT on Friday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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The capsule is carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. It plans to dock autonomously to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module.

“Congratulations to our NASA and SpaceX teams on the 10th crew rotation mission under our commercial crew partnership,” Janet Petro, acting administrator at NASA, said.

“This milestone demonstrates NASA’s continued commitment to advancing American leadership in space and driving growth in our national space economy.”

During Dragon’s flight, SpaceX will monitor a series of automatic spacecraft manoeuvres from its mission control centre in Hawthorne, California.

NASA will similarly monitor space station operations throughout the flight from the Mission Control Center at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The handover means that, at one point, there will be 11 astronauts onboard the ISS, despite the space laboratory traditionally being designed for just six.

“Ahead of Crew-9’s departure from station, mission teams will review weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of Florida,” NASA said.

“During their mission, Crew-10 is scheduled to conduct material flammability tests to contribute to future spacecraft and facility designs.

“The crew will engage with students worldwide via the ISS Ham Radio program and use the program’s existing hardware to test a backup lunar navigation solution. The astronauts also will serve as test subjects, with one crew member conducting an integrated study to better understand physiological and psychological changes to the human body to provide valuable insights for future deep space missions.”

The Falcon 9 was given the go-ahead to blast off on Friday after SpaceX teams were able to fix a hydraulic system issue that postponed the flight initially.

The problem affected the clamps that hold the rocket on the pad, and the team was worried that should they not open evenly, it could cause the rocket to tip slightly.

However, NASA’s Ken Bowersox told ABC News in the US that while teams thought there was a low probability of a serious failure, they decided not to take the risk.

SpaceX last month swapped the mission capsule destined to be used by Crew 10 to a previously used model to speed up the stranded astronauts’ return.

While the spacecraft, known as Endeavour, still needed to pass a flight readiness assessment, the process was far more efficient than the “complete processing” required if a fresh vehicle was deployed.

NASA said Anne McClain would be the commander of Crew-10 and is making her second trip to the orbital outpost since her selection as an astronaut in 2013.