The two astronauts who remained in the International Space Station (ISS) since June they celebrated the arrival of a SpaceX capsule on Sunday, marking the start of their journey home.
This mission of the company Elon Musk docked with the orbital laboratory and will take them back to the Land in February 2025.
SpaceX mission that will return stranded astronauts docks with the ISS
He Falcon 9 rocket took off on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. from Cape Canaveral, in Florida (southern United States), carrying the mission Crew-9 in his Dragon shipand came into contact with the ISS at 5pm on Sunday.
About two hours after completing docking, the astronaut of the NASA Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov They boarded the station, hugging their colleagues as they floated.
“I would like to welcome our new comrades from Dragon Freedom“declared the station commander, Suni Williamsstranded aboard the ISS next to the astronaut Butch Wilmore.
“Alex, welcome to the International Space Station; and Nick, welcome home,” he added. Nick Hague He already spent six months aboard the ISS in 2019.
When hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back Butch Wilmore and Suni Williamswhose stay in the ISS dragged on for months due to problems with their spacecraft Starlinerdesigned by Boeing.
The newly developed Starliner was making its first manned flight when it took Wilmore and Williams to the space laboratory in June.
Initially they were only going to stay there for eight days, but after problems arose with the propulsion system of the Starliner during the flight, the POT She was forced to consider a change of plans.
After weeks of intense testing on the reliability of the Starlinerthe space agency finally decided to return it to Earth without its crew and return both astronauts with the SpaceX Crew-9 missionthe private company founded by the billionaire Elon Musk.
That company has been flying regular missions every six months to allow rotation of the crews of the ISS.
In total, Hague and Gorbunov They will spend about five months at the station, while Wilmore and Williams will have remained a long eight.
The SpaceX Crew-9 mission He also plans to carry out about 200 scientific experiments during his stay.
Source: Ambito
