SpaceX Crew Dragon docks with space station; Sunita Williams nears return

New Delhi: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) early Sunday morning at 12:04 a.m. ET, marking another milestone for the company’s Crew-10 mission. 

The docking, which occurred at an altitude of 250 kilometers, delivered four astronauts to the orbiting laboratory for a planned 180-day mission.

Launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Friday evening, March 14, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Crew-10 comprises NASA astronauts Anne McClain (commander), Nichole Ayers (pilot), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. 

The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, a public-private partnership aimed at ensuring safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation of astronauts to and from the ISS.

The Crew Dragon Endurance approached the ISS’s Harmony module, executing a precise docking procedure captured in an image shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on X:

SpaceX Dragon docks with Space Station
pic.twitter.com/nQMLO1U9gP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2025

The spacecraft, equipped with two Draco thrusters, 16 control engines, and a 2.5 kW solar array, is designed to support missions of up to 210 days at the station.

This mission replaces the Crew-9 team, which included NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, along with two Russian cosmonauts. Wilmore and Williams were originally part of Boeing’s Starliner program but were reassigned to Crew-9 after technical issues with the Starliner capsule delayed their return. 

Following the Crew-10 docking, Crew-9 is scheduled to return to Earth no earlier than Wednesday, March 19, after a 48-hour handover period, allowing for a seamless transition of responsibilities aboard the ISS.

The Crew-10 astronauts will conduct research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities during their six-month stay, contributing to the ISS’s ongoing scientific objectives. 

As test pilots for Boeing's new Starliner capsule, Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week or so when they launched from Cape Canaveral on June 5. A series of helium leaks and thruster failures marred their trip to the space station, setting off months of investigation by NASA and Boeing on how best to proceed.

Eventually ruling it unsafe, NASA ordered Starliner to fly back empty last September and moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight due back in February. Their return was further delayed when SpaceX's brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs before launching their replacements. To save a few weeks, SpaceX switched to a used capsule, moving up Wilmore and Williams' homecoming to mid-March.

Already capturing the world's attention, their unexpectedly long mission took a political twist when President Donald Trump and SpaceX's Elon Musk vowed earlier this year to accelerate the astronauts' return and blamed the former administration for stalling it.