NASA-SpaceX launch mission to bring home Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore

NASA and SpaceX on Saturday, 15 March, launched a crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) to bring home NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore who have been stranded in space since June 2024.

The Dragon spacecraft took off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida at 7:03 p.m. ET on Friday (4.33 am on Saturday IST).

"Have a great time in space, y'all! #Crew10 lifted off from NASA Kennedy at 7:03pm ET (2303 UTC) on Friday, 14 March," the US space agency shared in a post on social media platform X.

"Falcon 9 launches Crew-10, Dragon’s 14th human spaceflight mission to the Space Station," added SpaceX.

The Crew-10 mission carries NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to ISS.

The spacecraft, en route to ISS, will take about 28.5 hours to autonomously dock to the space station.

Following the arrival of Crew-10 to the orbital laboratory, NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 mission, consisting of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, will return to Earth.

The launch was originally planned for 13 March but was scrubbed less than an hour before liftoff due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm on the rocket.

Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in space since June 2024 due to technical problems of Boeing's Starliner which took them to ISS.

Earlier, the astronaut duo were scheduled to return to Earth by March-end but was preponed after US President Donald Trump urged SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to bring them back early.