Aerospace company SpaceX launched a rocket with a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS) to return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth — they spent nine months on ISS instead of the planned eight days.
NASA reported this.
The launch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft was scheduled for the evening of March 12, but was postponed for several days at the last minute. The new crew includes American NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers, Japanese JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. They will spend six months on the station.
The rocket is scheduled to reach the International Space Station on the evening of March 15. The current ISS crew is expected to return to Earth on March 19.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williamsʼ journey was originally supposed to last eight to ten days, but Boeingʼs Starliner encountered problems, so NASA decided to return the empty capsule to Earth and leave the astronauts on the space station for their safety.
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