NASA, SpaceX gear up for Crew-10 launch today to bring back stranded astronauts Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore

NASA and SpaceX will launch the Crew-10 mission Friday at 7:03 pm EDT (Saturday at 4:30 am IST) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to bring back astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded in space for nine months due to Boeing's Starliner issues. 

The announcement follows a 24-hour delay caused by a technical fault with the Falcon 9 rocket's ground support clamp arm. If successful, Williams and Wilmore are expected to depart the ISS after March 20. 

"The Crew-9 mission, which has a separate Dragon spacecraft already docked to the space station, will then undock from the orbiting laboratory and return to the Earth. Crew-9 undock is scheduled for no earlier than Wednesday, March 19," NASA stated. 

Williams and Wilmore were initially scheduled for a short stay on the International Space Station (ISS). However, they have been unable to return due to complications with the Starliner, which left without them last year. NASA's commercial crew programme, through this mission, includes a team of astronauts from Japan's JAXA and Russia's Roscosmos, marking the 10th operational crew rotation. 

The Crew-10 mission faced multiple setbacks, primarily due to strong winds and precipitation along the flight path. Technical issues also delayed previous attempts, including a hydraulic system problem detected shortly before a scheduled launch. The current mission timeline depends on favourable weather conditions at the splashdown sites off Florida's coast. 

Despite these delays, the space station is well-stocked, ensuring the crew's safety and ability to continue their work. "Earlier, the US space agency had moved up the mission by two weeks after President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, called for Wilmore and Williams to be brought back earlier than NASA had planned." This decision underscores the importance of the crew's safe return. 

The Crew-10 launch will also carry a replacement team to the ISS, including NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA's Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos's Kirill Peskov.