Washington: SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, as announced by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
NASA confirmed that the spacecraft docked at 12:04 a.m. EDT, when the ISS was located about 260 miles over the Atlantic Ocean. Following the docking, the crew will conduct standard leak checks and pressurization procedures in preparation for opening the hatch at around 1:45 a.m. (US time). Crew-10 will join the current Expedition 72 crew aboard the ISS, increasing the number of astronauts to 11, as the Crew-9 members—NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—prepare to return to Earth.
Earlier in the week, SpaceX and NASA launched a mission to bring back US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who had been stranded on the ISS for nine months. The launch occurred on Friday with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission.
This mission followed US President Donald Trump’s push for a quicker return of the astronauts, criticizing the delays in their rescue and accusing the Biden administration of neglecting them. Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were originally supposed to spend only a week at the ISS but have been stranded since June of the previous year due to issues with the spacecraft that was meant to bring them back.