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Rocket blasts off to bring stranded US astronauts home from the ISS at long last
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been launched from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to bring home US astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore who have been stranded on the International Space Station for nine months due to technical problems with the experimental spacecraft.
- Four astronauts have been sent on the mission to replace Williams and Wilmore, with the new crew scheduled to arrive early on Sunday. Williams, Wilmore, Nasa astronaut Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are expected to return to Earth on Wednesday.
- The mission faced controversy with claims from President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, without evidence, that former president Joe Biden had abandoned the astronauts on the station for political reasons. Williams and Wilmore rejected this accusation.
- The astronauts arrived at the ISS in June 2024 on a Starliner spacecraft, but technical issues with the craft's thrusters and propulsion system led to the decision not to use it for the return journey. Instead, the astronauts remained on the ISS while the empty spacecraft was flown back to Earth for a landing in the New Mexico desert.
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