A SpaceX mission has taken off to rescue the castaways of the ISS… in five months

SPACE – A rescue operation in space is necessarily very (very) long. This Saturday, September 28, a SpaceX mission took off with two passengers on board instead of the four initially planned, in order to leave two free seats on return for American astronauts stuck for several months in the International Space Station. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are stranded on the ISS due to malfunctions on a Boeing ship.

Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket took place at 7:17 p.m. Paris time from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was carried out from a new launch pad, used for the first time for a manned mission.

On board are NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexandre Gorbounov, which you can see in the tweet below. Their Dragon ship is due to dock with the ISS on Sunday around 11:30 p.m. in Paris.

When they return, scheduled for February, they will take with them the two space veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They took off at the beginning of June aboard a new spacecraft developed by Boeing, Starliner, for which it was the first crewed test flight to the Space Station (ISS).

Takeoff of the “Crew-9” delayed several times

The spacecraft was initially scheduled to return them to Earth eight days later, but problems detected with its propulsion system led NASA to question its reliability. After long weeks of tests, the space agency finally brought back the Boeing capsule empty, and decided to bring back the two castaways with the SpaceX mission, called Crew-9.

“We know that this launch is a bit unique, only planning for two passengers”recognized Jim Free, associate administrator at NASA, during a press conference on Friday. “I want to thank SpaceX for their support and flexibility”.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s company is carrying out this regular rotation mission for the ISS crew, the duration of which is like all the others planned for around six months.

However, the takeoff of Crew-9 was delayed from mid-August to the end of September in order to give NASA teams more time to make a decision regarding the Boeing spacecraft. The launch then had to be postponed again by a few days because of Hurricane Helene which hit Florida this week.

After a handover period with the four members of Crew-8, they will return to Earth aboard another SpaceX ship. In total, Nick Hague and Alexandre Gorbounov will spend around five months on the ISS. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stayed there for approximately eight months. Some 200 scientific experiments are planned during their stay.

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