Space’s Crew Dragon Endurance lifted off from Kennedy Space Center this evening carrying Crew-10 to the International Space Station, two days later than planned. When they arrive at the ISS late tomorrow, they will be greeted by the seven astronauts currently living and working there. Among them are Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the NASA astronauts who have become famous because their 8-day test flight on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft last summer turned into a 9-month mission first because of problems with Starliner and then delays with a new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
Mission Commander Anne McClain (NASA), pilot Nichole Ayers (NASA), and mission specialists Takuya Onishi (JAXA) and Kirill Peskov (Russia) lifted off at 7:03 pm ET from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A.
Crew-10, L-R: Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos), Nichole Ayers (NASA), Anne McClain (NASA), Takuya Onishi (JAXA).
The launch was scheduled for Wednesday evening, but scrubbed because of a problem in a hydraulic system for a clamp arm on SpaceX’s erector transporter that takes the Falcon 9 rocket to the launch pad and lifts it into a vertical position. The clamp arms hold the rocket in position until just before liftoff. One of them had a pocket of trapped air that SpaceX cleared yesterday.
Crew-10’s launch already had been delayed about a month. They were supposed to use a brand new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, but it’s not ready yet.
SpaceX has four operational Crew Dragons — Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance and Freedom — and is building a fifth to meet demand from NASA and other customers. The first launch of the new spacecraft, which hasn’t been named yet, was supposed take Crew-10 to ISS in February, but there’s a problem with the capsule’s battery.
NASA and SpaceX decided to swap capsules and use Endurance instead so as not to further extend Crew-9’s mission following criticism from SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk and President Trump about how long Butch and Suni have been in space.
Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX Vice President for Build and Reliability, explained during a March 7 pre-launch briefing that the battery in the new capsule is very difficult to access: “It took a lot of capsule disassembly to get the battery out.” They’re ready to reinstall it, but refocused the workforce on getting Endurance ready for Crew-10. SpaceX has two private astronaut missions waiting to go: Axiom-4 will visit the ISS while Fram2 will circle Earth’s poles. Gerstenmaier didn’t say when either would launch.
With the successful liftoff tonight, Crew-10 will dock at the ISS about 11:30 pm ET tomorrow night, March 15. NASA likes to have a several day hand-over between crews and is currently targeting March 19 for Crew-9’s return, weather permitting.
Butch and Suni became part of Crew-9 when the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they flew to the ISS in June experienced propulsion failures. This was the first flight of Starliner with a crew onboard — the Crew Flight Test. After weeks of ground- and on-orbit tests, NASA concluded the risks were too high for Starliner to bring Butch and Suni back to Earth so they decided to make them part of the next regular crew rotation, Crew-9. International crews rotating on roughly six-month missions have occupied the ISS for more than 24 years.
Since 2020 when Crew Dragon began flights, the typical ISS crew complement is seven: four who come and go on Crew Dragon and three who use Russia’s Soyuz. Each Crew Dragon and each Soyuz includes at least one Russian and one American so one person from each country is always aboard to operate the interdependent U.S. and Russian ISS segments.
The International Space Station.
Crew-9 originally was composed of three NASA astronauts and a Roscosmos cosmonaut. Two of the NASA astronauts had to stay home so Butch and Suni could use their seats to return. The other two, NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, flew to ISS in September on Crew Dragon Freedom.
Crew Dragon Freedom has been docked at the ISS ever since, ready to bring Crew-9 — Butch, Suni, Nick and Aleksandr — home at any time. They haven’t come home because they’ve been waiting for their replacements to arrive on Crew-10. That day is close at hand.
Last Updated: Mar 14, 2025 7:22 pm ET