The Crew-10 mission, part of a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX, is slated to take off at 7:03 p.m. ET Friday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule, sitting atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets, will carry four Crew-10 astronauts — NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — to orbit.
The four crew members are expected to dock with the space station around 11:30 p.m. ET Saturday. They will spend a few days undergoing a “handover” period with Williams, Wilmore, and their fellow Crew-9 astronauts, NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The Crew-9 Dragon capsule has been docked at the space station since September. If all goes according to plan, Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov will climb aboard the Crew-9 spacecraft and head back to Earth on March 19.
SpaceX Crew-10 launch will pave the way for NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return home |
