NASA, SpaceX launch Starliner astronauts' replacement crew

preCharge News SCIENCE — NASA’s next International Space Station crew blasted off Friday, finally clearing the way for Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams to be ferried home next week by two other outgoing station crew members, finally closing out an extended space odyssey.

Crew-10 commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov took off from historic pad 39 at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:03 p.m. EDT, putting on a spectacular show as the rocket climbed away from the Kennedy Space Center atop a long jet of flaming exhaust.

Ten minutes after liftoff — and a dramatic first stage landing back at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — the Crew Dragon capsule was released from the rocket’s upper stage to fly on its own.

A panel of some kind floats away from the Falcon 9 rocket after launch. March 14, 2025. NASA

As it moved away, a camera on the Falcon 9’s second stage showed what a source described as insulation from the Falcon 9’s second stage. While unusual, the Crew Dragon was reported to be in good shape and ready to chase down the space station.

Given an on-time liftoff, the Crew Dragon will carry out an autonomous rendezvous with the space station, catching up with the lab Saturday night and moving in for docking at the space station’s forward port at 11:30 p.m.

They’ll be welcomed aboard by Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams, along with cosmonauts Alexsey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who were launched last September aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The Crew 10 fliers, seen during training. Left to right: Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, NASA pilot Nichole Ayers, NASA commander Anne McClain and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi. All four are pilots. Peskov and Onishi are veteran commercial jetliner pilots, Ayers is a former Air Force F-22 Raptor pilot and McClain is an Army master aviator and combat helicopter pilot.NASA

Hague and Gorbunov were launched aboard the Crew 9 Dragon in September. Two NASA astronauts who originally planned to be on that flight were bumped from the mission to free up two seats for Wilmore and Williams. They became part of Crew 9 and worked with Hague and Gorbunov for the duration of their six-month mission.

The Crew 9 fliers plan to spend two days familiarizing their replacements with the intricacies of space station operation before boarding their own Crew Dragon, the same one that carried Hague and Gorbunov to the station last September, for the trip home.

The flight plan calls for undocking Tuesday, setting the stage for re-entry and splashdown off Florida’s Gulf Coast next weekend. By that point, Wilmore and Williams will have logged about 290 days — 9.7 months — in space on a flight originally expected to last a little longer than one week. Hague and Gorbunov’s time in space will come to around 174 days, depending on the landing date.

“This is a huge mission for us on Crew 10,” said Steve Stich, manager of the commercial crew program that oversees SpaceX Crew Dragons and Boeing’s Starliner. “They’re all big, but this started all the way back to Crew 9 when we launched that mission with two empty seats, and we had those seats reserved for Butch and Suni.”