SpaceX Launches Crew-9 Astronauts from Upgraded Pad in Florida to Bring Boeing Starliner Crew Back Home

A unique SpaceX mission is underway.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off today (September 28) at 1:17 PM EDT (1717 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, completing the Crew-9 astronaut mission was kicked off to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.

"That was a nice ride," NASA astronaut Nick Haag, the commander of Crew-9, radioed SpaceX's launch control after reaching orbit with crewmate Alexandr Gorbunov of Russia. The astronauts will arrive at the ISS on Sunday, September 29. You can follow the mission on our SpaceX mission live update page.

It was the first-ever astronaut launch from SLC-40, SpaceX's first launch pad in Florida, which has seen many unmanned launches over the years. SpaceX and NASA spent two years upgrading the platform with a new crew launch tower, access arm and emergency escape slide to prepare it for astronaut flights.

However, the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule on the Crew-9 flight were not new. SpaceX previously used the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to launch an unmanned Starlink mission. About 8 minutes after launch, the booster returned to Earth to land smoothly at SpaceX's Landing Zone 1 on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Dragon capsule has flown three other missions to the ISS: NASA's Crew-4 flight and two commercial trips for Axiom Space, Ax-2 and Ax-3.

The new launch pad is not the only novelty for Crew-9. The mission's Dragon capsule, called Freedom, will carry just two people to the ISS instead of the usual four. Freedom is saving two seats for Crew-9's trip back to Earth in February because two NASA astronauts already there need a ride home.

Those two space flyers are Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived at the ISS in June on the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner capsule. Their groundbreaking flight would last just ten days; However, Starliner had problems with thrust in orbit, so NASA continued to expand the mission to figure out how to deal with the anomaly.

Ultimately, the agency decided to bring Starliner home unmanned, which happened without incident on September 7.

Related: SpaceX's Crew-9 astronaut flight for NASA: How it became a rescue mission

Williams and Wilmore thus remained aboard the ISS, and Crew-9 was modified to make room for them on the return trip: NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were taken off the mission, leaving only Nick Haag and Aleksandr Gorbunov on the launch manifest.

"I think it was hard not to watch that rocket take off without thinking, that's my rocket and that's my crew, but I also know I'm not the only person who can think that," said Cardman, the original commander from Crew-9. she said after watching the launch, her voice breaking occasionally. "There are many people who made this mission happen, and there are people in space who are taking this capsule home, and it makes me very proud to know that I am one of the many people who can say that this is my crew is."

NASA officials said they will work to reassign Cardman and Wilson to a new mission in the future.

"A crew change is no small thing," NASA's deputy administrator Pam Melroy, a former Space Shuttle commander, said in a post-launch briefing. "It's very difficult for Nick and Alex. It's also difficult for Zena and Stephanie. But I think it's a reflection of the fact that human spaceflight is complicated and dynamic, and we have to be agile and focus on the mission."

Mission specialist Gorbunov works for the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Den Haag, the commander of Crew-9, is an experienced NASA astronaut and colonel in the US Space Force. In fact, this marks another first for Crew-9: No active member of the Space Force, which was established in December 2019, had previously launched on a space mission, although NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins transferred from the US Air Force to the Space Force . while aboard the ISS in 2020.

Crew-9 was scheduled to launch on Thursday (September 26), but the launch was postponed by two days due to Hurricane Helene. If all goes according to plan from here on out, Freedom will dock with the ISS on Sunday (September 29) at 5:30 PM EDT (10:30 PM GMT), and the hatches between the two spacecraft will last approximately one hour and 45 minutes. later. You can watch both milestones live via NASA and here on Space.com if the agency makes its stream available as expected.

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As the name suggests, Crew-9 is the ninth long-duration astronaut mission to the ISS that SpaceX has launched for NASA.

Elon Musk's company also has six other orbital crewed flights to its credit: the Demo-2 test mission to the ISS in 2020, three flights to the orbiting laboratory for Houston company Axiom Space and two free-flying efforts funded and led by tech billionaire Jared. Isaacman. The more recent Isaacman-led flights, Polaris Dawn, took place last month.

Like SpaceX, Boeing has a multibillion-dollar deal to transport NASA astronauts to and from the ISS. But it is unclear when Starliner will be cleared to fly operational crewed missions, given the problems it encountered during its recent test flight.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with post-launch comments from NASA's Pam Melroy. SpaceX's Crew-9 astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station on Sunday, September 29 at 3:30 PM EDT (1930 GMT). Docking is scheduled for 5:30 PM EDT (2130 GMT). Follow our Update page for SpaceX missions to see the Crew-9 dock live.

Mission expansions and manifesto shifts are not unheard of on ISS astronaut flights. For example, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin launched to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for a likely six-month stay in September 2022. However, their Soyuz leaked a few months later, and the trio not that. Ultimately, they won't return to Earth until September 2023, with a replacement Soyuz that Russia launched empty to enable their homecoming.