• Source:JND
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The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that will ferry back NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore stranded on the International Space Station, has successfully docked at the orbiting facility, a live stream of the mission showed. The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, with the Crew-9 mission on a Dragon spacecraft making contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm on Sunday.

After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their floating colleagues on the space station.

"What a fabulous day it was today," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said at a news conference.

When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans -- Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams -- whose stay on the ISS was prolonged for months due to problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.

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The newly developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June.

Starliner Dumped Amid Helium Leak, Other Troubles

Starliner faced helium leakage and outage of five of the eight aft-facing reaction control system thrusters, the spacecraft's Wikipedia page stated. This caused both the crew members to strand at the ISS, without any planning of such stay.

After much confusion and untoward delays, NASA later decided to ditch the Boeing spacecraft for the return mission of both astronauts and cited lessons from the past - Columbia (February 1, 2003, and Challenger (January 28, 1986) - for the change in stance. SpaceX Crew 9 spacecraft will carry both the stranded astronauts back to Earth in February 2025.

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No Starliner Suits In SpaceX Flight

Both Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will not be wearing the Starliner suits while making their return journey aboard the SpaceX shuttle, NASA said. As both the suits are separately compatible with the original space shuttle, fresh SpaceX suits will be sent aboard the Crew-9 mission for the stranded duo.

(With Agency Inputs)