- By Shibra Siddiqui
- Sat, 15 Mar 2025 02:09 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
SpaceX Crew 10 Mission: NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched the six-month Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on March 14, 2025, at 7:03 pm ET (4:33 am IST on March 15), from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This mission is aimed at bringing Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore along with Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov back to Earth, who have been aboard the ISS since June 2024 due to delays with Boeing's Starliner capsule.
The Crew-10 team comprises NASA astronauts Anne McClain (Commander) and Nichole Ayers (Pilot), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi (Mission Specialist) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov (Mission Specialist). The four astronauts boarded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Following a successful launch, they are scheduled to dock with the ISS on March 15, 2025, at approximately 11:30 pm ET (9:00 am IST on March 16).
A two-day handover period will take place before Crew 10 astronauts take over the station operations. Subsequently, Williams and Wilmore, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, are slated to depart the ISS, with their return to Earth anticipated around March 19 or 20, 2025. Before Crew-9’s departure, the mission team will asses the weather condition for the splashdown location off the Florida coast.
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Along with routine rotation, the Crew-10 mission is critical for the return of Williams and Wilmore, who had initially scheduled to stay at the ISS for eight days but have been stuck in space for nine months after technical issues developed on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The duo will return with astronauts who arrived on a SpaceX rescue mission last September, with two empty seats reserved for them on the return trip.
Crew-10 will spend six months on the ISS conducting diverse scientific experiments. Their research agenda includes Lunar navigation studies, investigating material flammability in space, and analysing the effects of space travel on the human body.
US President Donald Trump and his close ally Elon Musk have, time and again, asserted that a delay in stranded astronauts' returns was driven by politics. Trump, in an interview with Fox News, said that Biden was going to leave stranded NASA astronauts in space. However, Wilmore denied any political involvement, saying, "I can tell you at the outset, all of us have the utmost respect for Mr Musk and obviously, respect and admiration for our president of the United States, Donald Trump."