LIVE: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 prepares for launch to relieve stranded astronauts

(NEXSTAR) – Launch is a “go” for the SpaceX Dragon, which will carry a team of astronauts to the International Space Station on Wednesday to finally relieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck in space since last June.

The launch of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission is scheduled for 7:48 p.m. Eastern Time from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We are streaming the final preparations and launch in the video player above.

The crew will include two NASA astronauts, commander Anne McClain and pilot Nichole Ayers. A mission specialist from JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will also be aboard.


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Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week or so when they launched last June aboard Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, making its crew debut after years of delay. The Starliner had so many problems getting to the space station that NASA ruled it too dangerous to carry anyone and it flew back empty.

Their homecoming was further delayed by extra completion time needed for the new SpaceX capsule that was supposed to deliver their replacements.

Wilmore and Williams — retired Navy captains and repeat space fliers — have insisted over the months that they are healthy and committed to the mission as long as it takes. They took a spacewalk together in January.


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They will wear generic SpaceX flight suits for the ride back, not the usual custom-made outfits bearing their names because their trip home in a Dragon capsule was unplanned. That’s fine with them, although Wilmore hinted he might use a pen to write his name on his suit.

“We’re just Butch and Suni,” Williams said. “Everybody knows who we are by now.”

Once Crew-10 arrives in space, they’ll go through a handover period with the Crew-9 mission. The handover is expected to last about a week. Then NASA astronauts Wilmore and Williams, joined by Nick Hague (also of NASA) and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov, will head back to Earth on the SpaceX Dragon.

The official “go” comes after NASA and SpaceX finished readiness reviews on Tuesday. NASA said the weather looked good Wednesday, with a “greater-than-95% chance” of favorable conditions at liftoff.

The new crew’s scientific mission is scheduled to last about four months.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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