SpaceX capsule docks with ISS to bring back stranded Nasa astronauts

A SpaceX capsule delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) early on Sunday in a Nasa crew-swap mission that will allow a pair of stuck astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to return home after nine months on the orbiting lab.

About 29 hours since launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday evening, the Crew-10 astronauts’ SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS at 4.04am GMT on Sunday.

They were welcomed by the station’s seven-member crew, which includes Wilmore and Williams – veteran astronauts and retired Navy test pilots who have remained on the station after problems with Boeing’s Starliner capsule forced Nasa to bring it back empty.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the International Space Station in September. Photograph: AP

Otherwise a routine crew rotation flight, the Crew-10 mission is a long-awaited first step to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.

The pair are scheduled to depart the ISS on Wednesday as early as 8am, along with American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Hague and Gorbunov flew to the ISS in September on a Crew Dragon craft with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams, and that craft has been attached to the station ever since.

The Crew-10 crew, scheduled to stay on the station for roughly six months, includes Americans Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russian Kirill Peskov.

The crew-swap mission became entangled in politics when the US president, Donald Trump, and his adviser Elon Musk, who is also SpaceX’s CEO, urged a quicker Crew-10 launch. They claimed, without evidence, that Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had abandoned Wilmore and Williams on the station for political reasons. One Danish astronaut, Andreas “Andy” Mogensen, who has twice flown to the ISS gave the claim short shrift, saying “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.”

Wilmore and Williams have been doing scientific research and conducting routine maintenance with the other five astronauts.

Williams told reporters this month that she was looking forward to returning home to see her two dogs and family. “It’s been a rollercoaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” she said.