SpaceX Launches NASA's Crew-10 Mission To ISS

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a four-member crew to the International Space Station on Friday night, paving the way for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return to Earth after being there for nine months due to issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule. Arrival is set for late Saturday night. The Associated Press reports: NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting. The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.

Reaching orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free. 'Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher,' McClain said minutes into the flight. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

Wilmore and Williams aren't stranded on the International Space Station, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN in a rare space-to-earth interview last month. 'That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck -- and I get it. We both get it,' [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. 'But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded.' Wilmore added a request: 'If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer...'

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