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A SpaceX mission launching Saturday aims to reunite the Boeing Starliner astronauts with the spacecraft that will take them home. NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been on the International Space Station for more than 100 days longer than expected.
The mission, called Crew-9, is on schedule to lift off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday at 1:17 p.m. ET. NASA will stream the event live on its website.
The space agency previously postponed the launch attempt from Thursday and rolled the spacecraft back to its hangar as Hurricane Helene threatened Florida and other parts of the southeastern United States. Mission teams reset everything on the launch pad after the danger had passed.
"We rolled out a little late this morning," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said at a news conference on Friday. "We are standing vertically on the path."
A backup start window has also been set for 12:54 PM ET on Sunday, should weather or technical issues force Saturday's attempt.
Unlike other routine trips that transport astronauts to and from the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program - eight of which SpaceX has already launched - the outbound portion of this mission will carry only two crew members instead of four: NASA astronaut Nick Haag and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Two other seats will fly empty, reserved for Williams and Wilmore on the spacecraft's return flight in 2025.
The configuration is part of an ad hoc plan that NASA decided to implement in late August after the space agency deemed the Starliner capsule too risky to return with Williams and Wilmore. The two rode the Starliner to the International Space Station for a week-long test flight in early June.
At launch, Den Haag and Gorbunov are strapped into the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, nicknamed Freedom because it sits atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The launch vehicle roars to life, powered by nine massive engines at its base to propel the 544,300-kilogram rocket system into the air.
After about 2.5 minutes, the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage stops firing and separates from the rocket's second stage. The second stage will then ignite its own engine and continue to propel the Crew Dragon capsule to more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,360 kilometers per hour) - or 22 times the speed of sound.
As the crew reaches higher speeds, the rocket's first stage will self-return and land on a ground platform in Florida so SpaceX can refurbish and reuse the vehicle.
Once the Crew Dragon capsule reaches orbital speeds, the spacecraft will detach from the Falcon 9's second stage and begin maneuvering through Earth orbit under its own power, using onboard thrusters to gradually adjust its position. so it can connect to the International Space Station. 5:30 PM ET Sunday.
A 'heartbreaking' crew swap
Williams and Wilmore watched on September 6 as their Boeing-built capsule returned from the station without them.
Engineers had worked for months to understand problems with helium leaks and thrust failures that had plagued the Starliner's journey to the space station, and NASA ultimately declared that there were too many uncertainties and risks to allow the vehicle to carry the crew on the return trip. It is not clear when Boeing's Starliner will fly again.
NASA remains in the same situation it has been in for four years, with SpaceX as the sole provider of the space agency's Commercial Crew Program, which was designed to transfer the job of crew rotations at the International Space Station to the private sector. (Boeing and SpaceX were each awarded contracts in 2014, and SpaceX began flying routine flights in 2020, while Boeing struggled to bring Starliner development to the finish line.)
To get Williams and Wilmore home, NASA turned to SpaceX and opted to remove two previously assigned members from the Crew-9 team to make room for the Starliner test pilots.
The space agency announced in late August that NASA astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman would be the launch members of the mission. Cardman was scheduled to make her first trip to space and was expected to become commander of the Crew-9 mission.
Gorbunov, a Russian cosmonaut who got his seat through a ride-sharing agreement between NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, remained on the crew. And Cardman handed over the duties of commander - the top position during a space flight - to Hague, who had previously been appointed pilot of Crew-9.
"Handing over the helm to The Hague is both heartbreaking and an honor. Nick and Alex are truly an excellent team and they will be ready to go one step further," Cardman said after the announcement in a message on the social platform X, formerly Twitter.
"I only wish (Wilson), Nick, Alex and I could fly together, but we unhesitatingly choose to be part of something much bigger than ourselves. Advertisement astra and aspera. Go Crew 9."
In the meantime, Williams and Wilmore have become accustomed to daily life on the space station. The duo transitioned from a lighter test mission schedule to taking on roles as full-time crew members, with Williams taking on the role of commander in the orbiting laboratory.
Gorbunov and Den Haag will join them after they dock with the space station, scheduled for Sunday.
When asked if he was having trouble adjusting to the prospect of having to wait months longer to get home, Wilmore said during a September 13 news briefing from the space station, "I'm not going to worry about it." I mean, there's no benefit to it at all. So my transition was - maybe it wasn't immediate - but it was pretty close.
Williams said she missed her family and was disappointed to miss some family events this fall and winter, but she added, "This is my happy place. I love being here in the room. It's just fun. You know, every day you do something that's work, quote, unquote, you can do it upside down. You can do it sideways, so it adds a slightly different perspective.
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