A view of a SpaceX rocket across the Rio Grande in Brownsville, Texas, USA on July 22, 2024.
Veronica Cardenas | Reuters
space x rescue operations started Two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station on Saturday sent a scaled-down crew to bring them back, but not until next year.
The capsule rocketed into orbit and carried a test pilot. Boeing spacecraft returns to Earth empty earlier this month due to safety concerns. Due to the vehicle switch, recovery was left to NASA’s Nick Haig and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
The newly launched flight, with two open seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams, won’t return until late February, as NASA rotates the space station’s crew about every six months. Officials said there was no way SpaceX could bring them home sooner without disrupting other scheduled missions.
By the time they return, they will have been in space for more than eight months. When they signed up for Boeing’s first astronaut flight in June, they expected to be gone in just a week.
NASA ultimately decided that Boeing’s Starliner was too dangerous after a series of thruster failures and helium leaks marred flights to the orbital complex. The space agency has cut two astronauts from this SpaceX launch to make room for return legs for Wilmore and Williams.
Mr. Williams has since been promoted to commander of the space station, and will soon return to its regular seven-person crew. Once Hague and Gorbunov arrive this weekend, the four astronauts who have lived there since March will be able to depart in their own SpaceX capsules. Their return was delayed by a month due to disruptions at Starliner.
Hague said before the flight that human spaceflight always involves change.
“Something is always changing, and maybe this time it’s a little more clear to the public,” he said.
Haig was appointed to lead the rescue mission based on his experience and response to a launch emergency six years ago. The Russian rocket failed shortly after liftoff, and the capsule carrying him and the cosmonauts jumped from the top to safety.
New NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and veteran astronaut Stephanie Wilson were pulled from this flight as NASA chose to work with SpaceX to bring the stranded astronauts home. Ta. The space agency said both vehicles are eligible to fly on future missions. Gorbunov remained under an exchange agreement between NASA and the Russian Space Agency.
“We don’t know exactly when we’re going to launch into space, but we know we’re going to get there,” Cardman said from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where he participated in a livestream of the launch.
Hague acknowledged the challenges of launching with half the crew and returning with two trained astronauts on a separate spacecraft.
“We have a dynamic challenge ahead of us,” said Haig, who arrived from Houston last weekend. “We know each other well, are professional, and do exactly what is asked of us.”
SpaceX has long led NASA’s commercial crew program, which was established when the Space Shuttle retired more than a decade ago. SpaceX surpassed Boeing in delivering astronauts to the space station in 2020, and NASA now flies with a crew of up to 10 people.
Boeing has been plagued by problems over the years, and after the first Starliner went off course, it repeatedly conducted Starliner test flights with no one on board. Leaving Wilmore and Williams in space, Starliner landed without incident in the New Mexico desert on September 6, before returning to Kennedy Space Center. A week ago, the head of Boeing’s defense and space division was replaced.
After being delayed by Hurricane Helen in Florida, SpaceX’s latest launch marked the first for astronauts from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX took over the old Titan rocket pad about 20 years ago and used it to launch satellites while flying crews from the former Apollo and shuttle pads at Kennedy next door. The company wanted more flexibility as more Falcon rockets take flight.
