In a significant development, NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a much-awaited crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, thus paving the way for the return of US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded on the ISS for nine months.
The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, and a crew of four astronauts – Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The four astronauts will replace veteran NASA astronauts and retired US Navy test pilots Wilmore and Williams, who were the first to fly Boeing Starliner capsule to the ISS in June last year. A spacecraft malfunction resulted in the eight-day mission being delayed for months. The duo were set to return to earth in February, but it was delayed yet again.
