SpaceX capsule docks with ISS in crew swap
A SpaceX capsule delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station in a NASA crew-swap mission that will allow a pair of stuck astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to return home after nine months on the orbiting lab.
About 29 hours after launching from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Crew-10 astronauts' SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked to the ISS .
They were welcomed by the station's seven-member crew, which includes Wilmore and Williams - veteran NASA astronauts and retired Navy test pilots who have remained on the station after problems with Boeing's BA.N Starliner capsule forced NASA to bring it back empty.
Otherwise a routine crew rotation flight, the Crew-10 mission is a long-awaited first step to bring Wilmore and Williams back to Earth - part of a plan set by NASA last year that has been given greater urgency by President Donald Trump since he took office in January.
Hague and Gorbunov flew to the ISS in September on a Crew Dragon craft with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams, and that craft has been attached to the station since.
The Crew-10 crew, scheduled to stay on the station for roughly six months, includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
Minutes after reaching orbit, McClain, part of NASA's astronaut corps since 2013, introduced the mission's microgravity indicator - per tradition in American spaceflight to signal the crew safely reached space - as a plush origami crane, "the international symbol for peace, hope and healing."
"It is far easier to be enemies than it is to be friends, it's easier to break partnerships and relationships than it is to build them," McClain, the Crew-10 mission commander, said from the Crew Dragon capsule, her communications live-streamed by NASA.
The Crew-10 mission is part of a normal crew rotation happening at an unusual time for NASA's ISS operations - rather than a dedicated mission to retrieve Wilmore and Williams, who will return to Earth as late additions to NASA's Crew-9 crew.
