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

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After their long journey and spending several months in the International Space Station, the two Boeing Starliner astronauts will soon join the flight that will eventually bring them to ‘house.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, chosen by NASA to take astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed dangerous for the crew, is approaching the space station. The spacecraft, on a mission called Crew-9, is expected to stop at around 5:30 pm ET Sunday.

Inside the SpaceX vehicle are NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Beside them were two empty seats, reserved for Williams and Wilmore to occupy when the team returned to Earth next year.

Hague and Gorbunov launched aboard Crew Dragon on Saturday afternoon from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Although they reached their intended orbit without incident, SpaceX has finally revealed that the second stage, or upper part, of the Falcon 9 rocket that powered the first part of their mission had problems when it stopped and capsule.

After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, the second Falcon 9’s was dropped into the ocean as planned, but it received a deorbit flare,” the company shared in a post on X, a media platform. social network that used to be called Twitter. “As a result, the second stage reached the sea without any problems, but outside the target area.”

SpaceX has announced that it will suspend flights using the Falcon 9 – the world’s most powerful rocket – while it checks for malfunctions. “We will begin to develop when we fully understand the cause,” the company said in the X post.

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

So far, SpaceX Crew Dragon’s Crew Capsule-9 has spent about a day traveling in orbit as he prepares to enter the international airport. Once safely docked in one of the space station’s docking bays, the spacecraft will open its hatch, allowing Hague and Gorbunov to join the other astronauts already aboard. the water is swirling.

Together, Hague, Williams, Wilmore and Gorbunov will complete SpaceX’s Crew-9 team. The group will spend about five months in the airport before returning home no later than February.

Williams and Wilmore made their first trip to the International Airport in early June aboard a Boeing Starliner for what was expected to be a week-long test mission.

But issues of helium leaks and faulty propellants left engineers scrambling to figure out what went wrong — and NASA ultimately decided the Starliner problem wasn’t understood well enough for the space agency to allow Williams and Wilmore returned to the ship.

Instead the Starliner flew home empty on September 6.

After deciding not to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth in the Starliner, NASA has chosen to organize the SpaceX flight plan, raising two more astronauts – astronaut Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman, who are set to travel his first in space – and crew. – 9 space missions for one Starliner.

But that means Williams and Wilmore will have to fulfill the duties of the original Crew-9 crew, taking a few months of work at the airport before returning.

Both Williams and Wilmore – former astronauts on the space station – have said that they have quickly converted to the idea of ​​being in space until next year, with Williams finding that the microgravity environment is “a happy place “yeah.

The current crew members on the International Space Station are Don Pettit of NASA and Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The trio arrived at the space station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on September 11.

Pettit and Gorbunov flew in a spacecraft manufactured outside their country as part of a space-sharing agreement between NASA and its Russian partner.