The SpaceX Crew-9 mission arrives at the ISS to join the Starliner astronauts

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After their week-long journey turned into a months-long stay on the International Space Station, two Boeing Starliner astronauts are now within range of the spacecraft that will eventually bring them home.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, chosen by NASA to carry astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed too risky for the crew, has arrived at the space station. The vehicle on a mission called Crew-9 docked with the ISS around 5:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

On board the SpaceX vehicle were NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Next to it were two empty seats that Williams and Wilmore had reserved for the group’s return to Earth next year.

The capsule’s hatch opened around 7:04 p.m. ET, allowing Hague and Gorbunov entry to the space station. Shortly thereafter, a welcoming ceremony took place with Hague, Gorbunov, Williams, Wilmore, and the other seven crew members currently aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Hague and Gorbunov launched aboard Crew Dragon from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday afternoon. Although they reached their planned orbit without any problems, SpaceX later revealed that the second stage, or upper portion, of the Falcon 9 rocket that powered the first part of its journey had a problem after it separated from the capsule.

“Following today’s successful launch of Crew-9, the Falcon 9 second stage was disposed of at sea as planned, but experienced a non-nominal deorbit burn,” the company said in a post on X, the social media platform, which was formerly known as Twitter. “As a result, the second stage landed safely in the sea, but outside the target area.”

SpaceX said it would pause flights on Falcon 9 – the world’s most launched rocket – to explore the anomaly. “We will resume launch once we have a better understanding of the root cause,” the company said in the X post.

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

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

Williams and Wilmore first traveled to the International Space Station in early June aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft on what was expected to be a week-long test mission.

But problems with helium leaks and faulty engines left engineers scrambling to find the problem – and NASA ultimately concluded that the Starliner’s problems were not understood well enough for the space agency to allow Williams and Wilmore back on board could.

Instead, the Starliner flew home empty on September 6th.

After NASA decided not to return Williams and Wilmore to Earth on the Starliner, it instead opted to rearrange SpaceX’s flight schedules and include two more astronauts – space veteran Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman – making their first trip to space should – be released from the crew -9 mission to make room for the Starliner team.

However, this meant that Williams and Wilmore had to fulfill the duties of the original Crew 9 personnel and undertake months of routine work on the space station before their return trip. Space agency officials said spacecraft availability and the needs of the ISS played a role in the decision to keep Williams and Wilmore in space for a full crew rotation rather than returning them to Earth sooner.

“We’ve talked a lot about what to do when it comes to turning them back down,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a news conference Friday. “When we look at the vehicles we have ready – and the flights – it just made a lot of sense to rotate them back down with Crew-9 and have the two empty seats. Obviously the Crew 8 vehicle wasn’t the right time to bring them back down.”

He added that NASA’s next mission to the space station will include a new capsule.

“We could plan it a little shorter, but we would have to have another vehicle ready for that. “So as we worked with SpaceX, the next vehicle for Crew-10, which will be released in February, is a brand new Dragon that we want to prepare,” Stich said. “We would like to fly this kite and spread the flights across the kites. And that’s actually why we’re going to keep Butch and Suni there a little longer.”

Both Williams and Wilmore – veterans of previous missions to the space station – said they had easily adapted to the idea of ​​staying in space until next year, with Williams noting that the microgravity environment was their “happy place.”

Rounding out the personnel currently aboard the International Space Station are Don Pettit and Aleksey Ovchinin from NASA and Ivan Vagner from the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The three arrived at the space station on September 11 aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle.

Pettit and Gorbunov rode aboard spacecraft developed outside their home countries as part of a seat-swap agreement between NASA and its Russian counterpart.