SpaceX spacecraft arrived at the international space station on Sunday, flying just a day ago to deploy other astronauts in place of US space agency NASA astronauts Butch Wilmor and Sunita Williams. With this, the way to Williams and Wilmor's return paved. Four new astronauts representing the United States, Japan and Russia have arrived at the international space station. They will spend a few days getting information about the station from Williams and Wilmore.
Alon Musk's company SpaceX's spacecraft dragon has arrived at the international space station about 28 hours later. On March 16, it docked at 9:40 am on Indian time and opened at 11:05 am. The spacecraft will bring Indian -origin American astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth, who have been trapped in the space headquarters for 9 months.
The four-member crew-10 team flew on the Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX at 4:30 am on Saturday. It was launched from the Kennedy Space Center. After arriving at the crew-10 space station, crew-9 astronauts will return to the earth with Nick Hagg, Alexander Gorbunov, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmor. These four astronauts can return to Earth from the space station on March 19.
Sunita and Buch Boeing and NASA's joint 'crew flight test mission' went. Sunita was a spacecraft pilot in this. Butch Wilmore, who was accompanied by him, was the commander of the mission. They were both back to Earth after staying at the International Space Station (ISS) after 8 days.
Boeing's starliner spacecraft for this mission was launched by Atlas V Rocket at 8:22 pm on June 5, 2024. The spacecraft arrived at the space station on June 6 at 11:03 pm. It was to arrive at 9:45 pm but there was a problem with the thruster.
The purpose of this mission was to prove the ability to take the spacecraft astronauts to the space station and return from there. Astronauts also had to do research and several experiments at their 8 days at the space station. During this mission, he also had to fly the spacecraft himself.
During the Starliner Mission, 5 out of 28 reaction control thrusters failed. There were also 5 helium leaks in 25 days. Hillium is very important for delivering propellant to thrusters. In this case there was concern about the spacecraft safe. After analyzing the data, NASA decided that the starliner was not safe to return the spacecraft Sunita and Butch Wilmor, so it called back to the starliner spacecraft without astronauts on September 6.
The SpaceX was now entrusted with the back of the astronauts trapped at the space station. SpaceX's dragon spacecraft takes four astronauts every few months to the space station and brings the previous crew back to the earth. When SpaceX launched the crew 9 mission on September 28, 2024, there were 4 astronauts, but two seats were vacated due to Sunita and Butch. On October 25, the 4 astronauts of the previous crew-8 mission returned to Earth in the spacecraft.
On March 15, SpaceX launched a crew-10 mission with 4 astronauts. The astronauts arrived at the space station on March 16. Now two crew-9 astronauts are being brought back to Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmor. It is believed that if the weather is favorable, both trapped astronauts will be drained in the water near the coast of Florida next week.
