SpaceX on Friday launched a crew to the International Space Station (ISS), a closely watched mission that would allow marooned astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to finally return home.
The company’s Falcon 9 rocket topped with the crew’s Dragon capsule launched shortly after 7pm New York time from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
About 10 minutes into the flight, the capsule detached from the upper portion of the rocket and SpaceX said the crew was on their way to the ISS.
Photo: NASA via AFP
The mission crew includes two NASA astronauts, Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, as well as Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
NASA maintains a continuous, rotating presence on the ISS to help manage the station’s operations and research. That means the Crew-10 astronauts must arrive at the station and go through a roughly two-day handover period before the current crew, which includes Wilmore and Williams, can depart. Then, Williams and Wilmore are slated to board a capsule already docked at the station and head back to Earth with other crew members no earlier than Wednesday.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June last year on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft and were initially slated to stay for about a week.
However, after Starliner had technical difficulties on the journey there, NASA declared that it was too risky to bring the astronauts home on the craft.
Instead, the space agency stated that the astronauts would ride back to Earth on a SpaceX craft, extending Wilmore and Williams’ stay for about nine months.
Their return home, set to happen after the safe arrival and transition of Crew-10, has captured national attention and concern, including from US President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
The arriving Crew-10 is planned to remain on board the ISS until the fall, conducting a range of scientific research, including on lunar navigation, material flammability and the human body’s reaction to space.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
RSS