Blitz Bureau
WASHINGTON: The SpaceX crew that will ferry back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station docked with the orbiting laboratory on September 29, a live stream of the mission showed.
The Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 28, with the Crew-9 mission on a Dragon spacecraft making contact with the ISS.
After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their floating colleagues on the space station.
When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans — Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — whose stay on the ISS was prolonged for months due to problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.
The newly developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June.
They were supposed to be there for only an eight-day stay, but after problems with the Starliner’s propulsion system emerged during the flight there. The spacecraft went through a range of technical glitches such as helium leaks and propulsion issues, which could make their return to Earth unpredictable and dangerous.
After weeks of intensive tests on the Starliner’s reliability, the space agency finally decided to return it to Earth without its crew, and to bring the two stranded astronauts back home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
