After more than nine months in , two will soon be a step closer to coming home thanks to a crew swap mission to the International Space Station that launched on Friday.
In this still image taken from a NASA TV broadcast, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (r.) and Suni Williams (l.) hold a news conference from the International Space Station (ISS) on September 13, 2024. © Handout / NASA TV / AFP
At 7:03 PM (2303 GMT), NASA and SpaceX blasted off a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, after a technical issue with clamp arms connected to the rocket led to .
Crew-10's four-member team suited up, said their goodbyes, and rode out to the launchpad before strapping in to their seats.
But the real focus is : the long-overdue departure of NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
The two former Navy pilots have been stuck aboard the orbital lab since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back.
Instead, Starliner returned empty, without experiencing further major issues – and what was meant to have been a days-long roundtrip for Wilmore and Williams has now stretched to nine months and a week.
That is significantly longer than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of roughly six months – but is still much shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio aboard the ISS in 2023, or the held by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station.
Still, the unexpected nature of their prolonged stay away from their families – they had to receive additional clothing and personal care items because they hadn't packed enough – has garnered widespread interest and sympathy.
