Great joy
Return mission for ISS astronauts has arrived
US astronauts Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore, who have been stranded in space for more than nine months, have come a big step closer to returning to Earth. A space capsule with a new crew for the International Space Station (ISS) reached the outpost of humanity on Sunday night.
According to the US space agency NASA, the "Crew Dragon" spacecraft from tech billionaire Elon Musk's private space company SpaceX docked with the space station at 5:04 a.m. Central European Time (CET), just 420 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean. Live images from NASA showed the maneuver and also how the arriving space travelers and the crew of the space station hugged each other in greeting.
'Crew 10' is to replace 'Crew 9'
Crew Dragon was joined by the four-member Crew 10, consisting of US astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. The launch had originally been planned for last Wednesday, but had to be postponed due to a hydraulic problem on the ground. The problem was later solved.
Crew 10 is to replace Crew 9 on the International Space Station - the US astronaut Suni Williams, her colleagues Barry Wilmore and Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. After a few days together on board the ISS, "Crew 9" will return to Earth on Wednesday, while "Crew 10" will remain in space until the fall. However, bad weather could delay the return somewhat.
Series of breakdowns on the "Starliner" spacecraft
Hague and Gorbunov have been on board the ISS since the end of September, while Williams and Wilmore have been there since the beginning of June. They had flown to the ISS on a Starliner spacecraft. They were actually only supposed to stay there for around a week. However, due to various technical problems with the Starliner, NASA decided for safety reasons to bring the spacecraft back to Earth empty in September.
The Starliner was developed by Boeing on behalf of NASA to transport astronauts to the ISS as an alternative to SpaceX's Crew Dragon. However, the project suffered several setbacks and years of delays. Manned test flights were postponed several times due to various technical problems with the spacecraft and rocket.
It was not until June that Williams and Wilmore flew on board the spacecraft to the ISS - only to be stuck there for months. The 58-year-old Williams and the 61-year-old Wilmore had each been to space twice before.
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