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The SpaceX crew that will ferry back in February two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station docked with the orbiting laboratory on Sunday, a live stream of the mission showed. The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, with the Crew-9 mission aboard a Dragon spacecraft making contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm Sunday. After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their floating colleagues. "I just want to say welcome to our new compadres from...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a downsized crew to bring them home, but not until next year. The capsule rocketed into orbit to fetch the test pilots whose Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier this month because of safety concerns. The switch in rides left it to NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Needham native Suni Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore. Because NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with...

'This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory.' ================================================================== SpaceX's next astronaut mission won't get off the ground this month after all. Crew-9, SpaceX's ninth operational flight to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, had been targeted to lift off on Aug. 18. But it has been pushed back to no earlier than Sept. 24, the agency announced today (Aug. 6). "This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked...

SpaceX has delayed this month's Crew-9 astronaut launch to Sept. 24, to accommodate a traffic jam at the International Space Station as Boeing's Starliner remains stalled at the orbiting laboratory. SpaceX was scheduled to launch its ninth operational flight for NASA with four astronauts to the ISS on Aug. 18, before the space agency announced the delay Monday. "This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency's Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory," NASA said. Boeing's new Starliner capsule launched June 5, with NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore...

It wasn’t the original plan for the pallet to be discarded like this. The failed launch of a Soyuz rocket in 2018, in which NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin were forced to make an emergency landing in the Kazakh steppe, caused a disruption to the spacewalking schedule, leading to the leftover pallet. NASA’s spacewalk on February 1, 2021, involving astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover, was notable in that it concluded a four-year effort to upgrade the space station’s batteries. These batteries store energy collected by solar arrays, but in 2011 NASA decided to make the...

A few months from now, the International Space Station (ISS) could be unoccupied for the first time in nearly two decades. Russia's workhorse Soyuz rocket suffered a serious anomaly just minutes after launching two astronauts toward the ISS today (Oct. 11), forcing the spaceflyers' crew craft to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan. Those two explorers — NASA's Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin — made it through the bumpy touchdown just fine and are in good condition, NASA officials said. But the Soyuz will be grounded while Russian investigators try to figure out exactly what happened today, and how...

U.S. and Russian astronauts were forced to make an emergency landing Thursday after their booster rocket failed in mid-air moments after the launch, according to NASA. The two crew members were in “good condition” and had been reunited with their families at the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the agency said.

Two astronauts are alive after dramatically aborting their voyage to the International Space Station when their Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned while it carried them into orbit at 4,970mph. American Nick Hague and Russian Aleksey Ovchinin were forced to abort their mission on the cusp of space, at an altitude of approximately 50km (164,000ft). They landed safely in Kazakhstan after a 'ballistic re-entry', during which they experienced forces of up to 7G. Video footage from the launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome shows a large plume of smoke coming from the rocket at the moment it failed and footage from inside the...