Crew-9 astronauts head to space station as SpaceX reports rocket anomaly | CNN

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After their week-long trip turned into a months-long stay on the International Space Station, two Boeing Starliner astronauts will soon be reunited with the spacecraft that will eventually return them home.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule selected by NASA to carry astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed too dangerous for the crew is approaching the space station. The vehicle is expected to dock on a mission called Crew-9 around 5:30 PM ET on Sunday.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov are present in the SpaceX vehicle. Next to them are two empty seats reserved for Williams and Willmore to occupy when the band returns to the field next year.

Haig and Gorbunov launched Saturday afternoon from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Although they reached their intended orbit without incident, SpaceX later revealed that the second stage, or upper part, of the Falcon 9 rocket, which powered the first leg of their journey, experienced problems after separating from the capsule.

In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the company shared: “Following today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage exploded in the ocean as planned, but suffered an external burn. out of orbit As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside the target area.

SpaceX indicated that it will suspend flights using the Falcon 9 – the world’s most launched rocket – while it investigates the anomaly. “Once we better understand the root cause, we will resume the launch,” the company said in the X post.

CNN has reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration for comment.

Meanwhile, Crew-9’s SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has spent about a day traveling in orbit. As it prepares to dock with the International Space Station. Once safely docked with one of the station’s docking ports, the spacecraft will open its hatch, allowing Haig and Gorbunov to join the other astronauts already orbiting the lab.

Together, Haig, Williams, Wilmore and Gorbunov will complete SpaceX’s Crew-9 team. The group will spend about five months on the space station before returning home.

Williams and Wilmore first traveled to the International Space Station in early June aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft for a week-long test mission.

But issues with helium leaks and misfiring propellants left engineers scrambling to figure out what went wrong — and NASA eventually decided the Starliner’s problems weren’t sufficiently understood for the space agency to allow Williams and Wilmore to return to the ship. to give

The Starliner instead flew home empty-handed on September 6.

After NASA decided not to return Williams and Willmore to Earth on Starliner, it instead decided to change SpaceX’s flight plans and two other astronauts — spaceflight veteran Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman, who were scheduled to make the first trip. Do yourself into space – flew out of the crew. – 9 missions to create space for the Starliner team.

But this meant that Williams and Willmore would have to fill the duties of the main crew of Crew-9, and perform several months of routine work on the space station before the return trip.

Both Williams and Wilmore — veterans of previous missions to the space station — have said they’ve easily adjusted to the idea of ​​staying in space well into next year, with Williams noting that the microgravity environment is his “happy place.”

Employees currently on the International Space Station are NASA’s Don Pettit and Alexei Uchinin and Ivan Wagner of the Roscosmos space agency. The trio arrived at the space station on September 11 in a Russian Soyuz vehicle.

Pettit and Gorbunov boarded the foreign-built spacecraft as part of a seat-swapping agreement between NASA and its Russian counterpart.