Kennedy Space Center – Boeing’s Starliner astronaut’s return to Earth thrusts into the International Space Station as replacements arrived in Florida for next week’s rescue flight.
The quartet assigned to the SpaceX Crew-10 mission arrived at KSC on Thursday afternoon, jumping into the old Space Shuttle Landing facility. They will climb on the crew’s Dragon Endurance and launch from KSC’s launch pad 39-A above the SpaceX Falcon 9 on Wednesday at 7:48pm.
NASA astronauts, along with Commander Anne McLain and pilot Nicole Ayers, take up two of the four seats. They are combined with the Mission Specialist, Onish Island Takayama, with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Los Cosmos Cosmonaut Cyril Peskov.
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Their arrival at the ISS means that the crew can return home. This includes NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Snie Williams, who flew to the space station for Boeing Starliner flight test missions last June, but were left on the ISS when NASA chose to send Starliner home for safety reasons.
NASA then chose to go home as part of Crew 9. This was only two members, NASA Commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who flew off to the crew’s Dragon Freedom last September, leaving room for Williams and Wilmore to return.
The Hague and Golbunov spend less than six months, but Williams and Wilmore were originally as short as their eight-day stay, but have already been in space for more than nine months.
McLain was the only astronaut who spoke on landing. She said the crew is constantly in contact with the crew.
“We’re ready to make them five higher and we’ll bring them home in the coming weeks,” she said.
She also took an almost defensive stance on the importance of the space station. The space station has recently been the target of Elon Musk’s Tilade on its usefulness, calling for a quick break in 2028.
“We’re not just flying to space. We’re going to work at the International Space Station,” she said. “The International Space Station is our large surrounding national lab. Understood? And we carry out hundreds of scientific and science experiments every day.”
She noted that this is now the 25th year the ISS has been on a continuous crew basis and has been united among the nations over the years.
“The International Space Station is truly an asset to humans all over the world. It offers us a unique perspective on how we can observe our own Earth. It provides a unique environment for scientific research, such as microgravity and harsh conditions of radiation,” she said. “But I would like to say that the International Space Station is actually operating under NASA’s mission for all profits. This is not for the interests of our crew. It is not for the interests of any country. It is for the interests of all profits.”
She pointed to how daily life has benefited, including research into Parkinson’s disease, cancer, LASIK surgery, and osteoporosis.
She also called for leaders who threaten the unity that the ISS represents.
“If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together,” she said.
“It’s much easier to be an enemy than an enemy, and it’s much more difficult to build a partnership and build a relationship than to break them,” she said. “You can destroy them in one day.”
She concluded by defending the ISS mission in the face of that detractor.
“It’s easier to criticize than to take part,” she said. “The success of these programs depends on character leaders of every country, all life, all institutions, all badges, all companies, leaders of personality, those who wake up every day and work on long-term planning for the benefit of all of us.”
