SpaceX Crew-9 Mission Soars from Florida with International Space Station Astronauts for Extended Stay

A SpaceX mission due to unite the Boeing Starliner astronauts with the spacecraft that will bring them home has taken flight. NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have now been on the International Space Station more than 100 days longer than expected.

The SpaceX mission, called Crew-9, took off at 1:17 p.m. ET Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

NASA previously delayed the launch attempt from Thursday, rolling the spacecraft back into its hangar as Hurricane Helene threatened Florida and other parts of the southeastern United States. Mission teams reset everything at the launchpad Friday after the danger had passed.

Unlike other routine trips ferrying astronauts to and from the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program — of which SpaceX has already launched eight — the outbound leg of this mission is carrying only two crew members instead of four: NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Two other seats are flying empty, reserved for Williams and Wilmore to occupy on the spacecraft’s return flight in 2025. The configuration is part of an ad hoc plan that NASA chose to implement in late August after the space agency deemed the Starliner capsule too risky to return with crew.

Williams and Wilmore rode the Starliner to the International Space Station in early June for what was expected to be about a weeklong test flight.

At liftoff, Hague and Gorbunov were strapped inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, nicknamed Freedom, as it sat atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The launch vehicle roared to life, powering on nine massive engines that sit at its base to thrust the 1.2 million-pound (544,300-kilogram) rocket system into the air.

After about 2 ½ minutes, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket quit firing and broke away from the rocket’s second stage. The second stage then ignited its own engine and continued to propel the Crew Dragon capsule to more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,360 kilometers per hour) — or 22 times the speed of sound.

As the crew blazed to faster speeds, the rocket’s first stage guided itself back to land on a ground pad in Florida so that SpaceX can refurbish and reuse the vehicle.

Once the Crew Dragon capsule reached orbital speeds, the spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9’s second stage and began maneuvering through orbit on its own, using onboard thrusters to adjust its position gradually so it can link up with the International Space Station, expected at about 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday.

“Thank you guys, you know, we had the opportunity to meet so many people that were involved with the Falcon 9 along the way,” Hague said on NASA’s livestream after the launch. “It was a sweet ride.”

Williams and Wilmore watched on September 6 as their Boeing-built capsule returned from the station without them.

Engineers had worked for months to understand issues with helium leaks and thruster outages that had plagued the Starliner’s journey to the space station, and NASA ultimately declared too many uncertainties and risks existed to trust the vehicle to transport crew on its return trip. It’s not clear when Boeing’s Starliner might fly again. (CNN)