Stuck NASA astronauts welcome the SpaceX capsule that will bring them home next year

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station since June welcomed their new journey home with the arrival of a SpaceX capsule on Sunday.

SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a reduced crew of two astronauts and two empty spots reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in the dark as the two ships climbed 265 miles (426 kilometers) over Botswana.

NASA switched Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX after they had concerns about the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first crewed Starliner test flight, and NASA concluded that the engine failures and helium leaks that occurred after launch were too serious and poorly understood to jeopardize the test pilots’ return. So Starliner returned to Earth empty at the beginning of the month.

The Dragon, carrying Nick Hague of NASA and Alexander Gorbunov of the Russian Space Agency, will remain on the space station until February, turning what was supposed to be a week-long journey into a more than eight-month mission for Wilmore and Williams.

Two NASA astronauts were pulled from the mission to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return flight.

NASA likes to rotate its station crews about every six months. SpaceX has provided the taxi service since the company’s first astronaut flight in 2020. NASA also hired Boeing for ferry flights after the space shuttles were retired, but faulty software and other Starliner problems led to years of delays and more than $1 billion in repairs.

Starliner inspections are currently underway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Post-flight records review begins this week.

“We’re a long way from saying, ‘Hey, we’re writing Boeing off,'” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, said at a pre-launch briefing.

The arrival of two new astronauts means the four who have been up there since March can now return to Earth in just over a week in their own SpaceX capsule. Her stay was extended by a month because of the Starliner unrest.

Although Saturday’s launch went well, SpaceX said the rocket’s spent upper stage landed outside its target impact zone in the Pacific due to a faulty engine ignition. The company has halted all Falcon launches until it figures out what went wrong.