Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore near homecoming: NASA-SpaceX Crew-10 successfully docks at ISS

The NASA-SpaceX Crew-10 mission docked with the International Space Station (ISS) at approximately 9:37 AM IST on Sunday, March 16, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.. This mission is part of NASA's regular crew rotation and will also bring back stranded US astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore.


NASA’s live coverage resumed at 7:55 AM IST on Sunday, featuring astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi (JAXA), and Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos) as they approach the ISS for a long-duration science mission.


The Dragon spacecraft, designed to dock autonomously, will connect to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. However, both the Crew-10 team aboard the spacecraft and the ISS crew will monitor the approach closely.

Hatch opening is expected about 11:12 AM IST, after which Crew-10 will join the Expedition 72 crew, which includes NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Don Petitt, Sunita Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner.

The four newcomers will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Wilmore and Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.

Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month. The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.

Their ride arrived in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements’ brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.

Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida's coast.

Key points: Crew-10 Mission Launch & Purpose

• NASA and SpaceX launched the Crew-10 mission on March 15 to the ISS.
• The mission aims to replace astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, stranded on the ISS for nine months.
• The Crew-10 mission was launched via SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
• Crew-10 includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
• The crew is expected to arrive at the ISS at 9:00 AM IST.
• Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to return on March 19-20(tentative), along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

With inputs from AP