SpaceX is set to launch two astronauts into orbit on Saturday amid efforts to ‘rescue’ Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore. The Dragon spacecraft will take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida around 10:45 pm IST with a reduced crew — docking at the International Space Station in about 30 hours.
“The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will carry NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the orbiting laboratory for a five-month science mission,” reiterated an excerpt from the mission page on the NASA website.
Updates shared by the space agency indicate that the hatch of the spacecraft has already been closed and liftoff remains on schedule. The space station will be traveling over northeast Bulgaria at the moment of launch.
The capsule is scheduled to dock with the ISS around 3:30 am IST on Monday if all goes well.
There are also opportunities to launch on Sunday or Monday should weather or other issues prevent the flight at the last minute.
Hague and Gorbunov will join the two ‘stranded’ NASA astronauts (and several others) on board the ISS as members of the Expedition 72 crew upon arrival. The group will “perform research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities” over the next few months before the Wilmore and Williams fly home with the SpaceX Crew-9 duo in February 2025.
The two NASA astronauts had travelled to the ISS in early June for an eight day mission that unexpectedly became eight months long. Their Boeing Starliner had experienced several helium leaks and failures of its thrusters while docking. After months of analysis and testing, NASA decided it was too risky to bring them home on the Boeing capsule. The agency and Boeing instead returned the spacecraft uncrewed on Sept. 6, with the spacecraft landing under parachutes in New Mexico.
(With inputs from agencies)
