The Crew 9 mission carrying two astronauts was launched to the International Space Station on Saturday at 1:17 p.m. EDT. The Crew was launched atop the Falcon 9 rocket in SpaceX’s Dragon Spacecraft ‘Freedom’ from the Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, aka SLC-40 launch pad. The launch was streamed live on NASA’s official Youtube channel and NASA+ (a streaming platform by NASA).
The spacecraft will dock autonomously to the International Space Station’s forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module on Sunday, Sept. 29 at approximately 5:30 p.m. The crew consists of two astronauts, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The mission was originally planned to be a four-crew mission, but two of the mission astronauts, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were taken off of the crew-9 mission saving two seats on board the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft for the NASA astronauts, Sunita Williams and Butch Williams, as they remain stuck on the ISS.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore went to the ISS in June, and the originally planned 8-day mission has now become an 8-month-long mission due to multiple failures with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
The primary aim of this mission is to bring back the stuck astronauts safely by February 2025. The crew will also carry out various other tasks and research onboard the ISS. The crew will carry out around 200 scientific investigations, including the study of moisture effects on plants grown in space, blood clotting in space, and eyesight changes in the astronauts during their missions, according to an article published by NASA.
