SpaceX launches a new crew to the space station to replace NASA's stuck astronauts

A spacecraft carrying two NASA astronaut replacement crew members launched Friday night to the International Space Station, paving the way for the two astronauts to return to Earth after a long nine months. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams need SpaceX to send this rescue team to the space station before they can begin their journey home.

The replacement crew is expected to arrive at the space station late Saturday night. NASA hopes that the two groups of astronauts can conduct a handover so that Wilmore and Williams can brief the newcomers on various matters within the space station. Weather permitting, this will allow them to undock from the space station next week and splash down off the coast of Florida.

Accompanying Wilmore and Williams back to Earth are the astronauts who arrived at the space station last September aboard the SpaceX rescue mission spacecraft, which also had two empty seats reserved specifically for Wilmore and Williams. The newest crew members entering orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center include NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Onishi Takuya and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, which is considered a normal duration of stay, after which they will take over the work of Wilmore and Williams.

"Spaceflight is difficult, but humans are more resilient," McClain said a few minutes after the flight. As test pilots for Boeing's new Starliner spacecraft, Wilmore and Williams were originally scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral on June 5, with an expected stay of only about a week. However, a series of helium leaks and thruster failures disrupted their journey to the space station, prompting months of investigation by NASA and Boeing to determine the best course of action.

Ultimately, NASA deemed it unsafe to return the Starliner empty, so it ordered the Starliner to return empty last September and transferred Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight scheduled to return in February. Their return was delayed again because SpaceX's brand new spacecraft required extensive battery repairs before launching the replacement crew. To save a few weeks, SpaceX switched to a used spacecraft, moving Wilmore and Williams' return to mid-March.

Their unexpectedly extended mission has attracted worldwide attention, even taking on some political overtones. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump and SpaceX's Elon Musk pledged to expedite the astronauts' return, blaming the delays on the previous administration. Wilmore and Williams, both retired Navy captains who have previously lived on the space station, have repeatedly emphasized that they have supported the decisions made by NASA leadership since last summer.

The two have helped maintain the operation of the space station, including repairing damaged toilets, watering plants, and conducting experiments, and even conducted a spacewalk together. Williams has performed a total of nine spacewalks, setting a new record for the longest career spacewalk time for a woman. Wednesday's first launch attempt was postponed due to a hydraulic problem. There were concerns about one of the two grapple arms on the Falcon rocket support structure, which needed to be tilted away before launch. SpaceX later flushed the grapple arm's hydraulic system, eliminating trapped air.

The two said the extended stay has been hardest on their families—Wilmore's wife and two daughters, and Williams' husband and mother. In addition to reuniting with their families, Wilmore, an ordained church elder, is looking forward to resuming face-to-face pastoral work, while Williams can't wait to take her two Labrador retrievers for walks.

"We appreciate everyone's love and support," Williams said in an interview earlier this week. "This mission has gotten some attention. There's good and bad with that. But I think the good part is that more people are interested in the space exploration we're doing."