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Astronauts 'stranded' in ISS: Rescue ship docks

The SpaceX ship, tasked with bringing back to Earth the two astronauts stuck in the International Space Station (ISS), docked there on Sunday, according to images from the live broadcast of the mission.

On Sunday, the capsule that was supposed to rescue the two "stranded" astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS docked with the ISS. The Falcon 9 rocket took off Saturday at 1:17 p.m. local time (17:17 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a Dragon spacecraft that finally docked with the station Sunday at 5:30 p.m. (21:30 GMT).

The two passengers of the mission named Crew-9, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, entered the ISS shortly after 7:00 p.m. (2300 GMT) and embraced their colleagues floating in the ISS.

“I just want to welcome our new comrades from Dragon Freedom,” said the station’s commander, Suni Williams, stuck aboard the ISS with astronaut Butch Wilmore.

 


“Alex, welcome to the International Space Station, and Nick, welcome home,” she added. Nick Hague already spent six months aboard the ISS in 2019.

On their return, scheduled for February, Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbounov are to take with them Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. They took off at the beginning of June aboard a new spaceship developed by Boeing, Starliner, which was its first crewed test flight to the station.

Starliner was originally supposed to bring them back to Earth eight days later, but problems with its propulsion system led NASA to question its reliability.

Billionaire Elon Musk's company regularly carries out ISS crew rotation missions.

Crew-9's launch had been delayed from mid-August to late September to give NASA teams more time to make a decision about Boeing's spacecraft. The launch then had to be pushed back a few days again because of Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida this week.

In total, Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbunov will spend about five months on the ISS. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will have spent about eight months.

Some 200 scientific experiments are planned during Crew-9's stay aboard the flying laboratory.