SpaceX has launched a rescue mission for the two astronauts who have been stuck on board the International Space Station since December.
A Falcon 9 rocket, carrying NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday afternoon.
Because NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this flight with two empty seats reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams won’t return until late February.
Officials said there wasn’t a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.
By the time they return, the pair will have logged more than eight months in space. They expected to be gone just a week when they signed up for Boeing’s first astronaut flight that launched in June.
NASA ultimately decided that Boeing’s Starliner was too risky after a string of thruster troubles and helium leaks marred its trip to the orbiting complex.
The space agency cut two astronauts from this SpaceX launch to make room on the Dragon capsule’s return leg for Wilmore and Williams.
Williams has been promoted to commander of the space station, which will soon be back to its normal population of seven.
Once Hague and Gorbunov arrive on Sunday, four astronauts living there since March can leave in their own SpaceX capsule.
Hague noted before the flight that change is the one constant in human spaceflight.
“There’s always something that is changing. Maybe this time it’s been a little more visible to the public,” he said.
Hague was thrust into the commander’s job for the rescue mission based on his experience and handling of a launch emergency six years ago.
Earlier, Hague acknowledged the challenges of launching with half a crew and returning with two astronauts trained on another spacecraft.
“We’ve got a dynamic challenge ahead of us,” he said after arriving from Houston last weekend.
“We know each other and we’re professionals and we step up and do what’s asked of us.”
SpaceX has long been the leader in NASA’s commercial crew programme, established as the space shuttles were retiring more than a decade ago.
SpaceX beat Boeing in delivering astronauts to the space station in 2020 and it is now up to 10 crew flights for NASA.
Boeing has struggled with a variety of issues over the years, repeating a Starliner test flight with no one on board after the first one veered off course.
The Starliner that left Wilmore and Williams in space landed without any issues in the New Mexico desert on September 6 and has since returned to Kennedy Space Centre.
