NASA, SpaceX Launch the Mission to Bring Back Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore

NASA and SpaceX have launched the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which will bring back the stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore after nine long months. The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 4:33 am (IST) after a brief delay on Thursday.

The crew of four astronauts include – Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

Crew-10 is the 10th crew rotation mission under SpaceX’s human space transportation system and the 11th flight with a crew aboard to the ISS station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, including the Demo-2 test flight. The mission was delayed earlier due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm.

The veteran astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore of NASA have been stuck aboard the ISS since June last year. Originally the mission they were on, was supposed to be an eight-day ISS mission, which stretched into months due to a Boeing Starliner spacecraft malfunction. The astronauts were to return home in February next year, however, even that was delayed.

According to NASA, the two stranded astronauts will now return to Earth a few days after the Crew-10 launch.

Political Leverage

The two astronauts being stuck at ISS for all these months was a major political standpoint for the US President Donald Trump. He and his close advisor, Elon Musk — who leads SpaceX — have repeatedly suggested that former president Joe Biden “abandoned” the pair intentionally and rejected a plan to bring them back sooner. That accusation caused uproar in the space community, especially since Mr Musk did not provide any specifics.

The duo’s return plan has been unchanged since they were reassigned to SpaceX’s Crew-9, which arrived in September aboard another Dragon carrying only two crew members- instead of the usual four- to make room for Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams. When Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen pointed this out on X, Mr Musk lashed out at him, using a slur for mentally disabled people.

Some retired astronauts rushed to Mr Mogensen’s defense — while Mr Wilmore appeared to back the SpaceX CEO, saying his comments must have been “factual,” though he admitted he was not privy to any details.

President Trump in the meantime has drawn attention for his bizarre remarks about the situation, referring to Ms Williams, a decorated former naval captain, as “the woman with the wild hair” and speculating about the personal dynamic between the two.