Starliner astronauts’ return to Earth finally near as replacement crew readies to launch to space station

NASA is finally ready to launch its next space station crew, clearing the way for Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams to head back to Earth more than nine months after they took off on what they thought would be an eight-day stay in space.

Crew 10 commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are scheduled for launch from historic pad 39 at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:48 p.m. EDT Wednesday. If all goes well, they will catch up with the space station Thursday, moving in for docking at the lab’s forward port at 6 a.m.

Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams, along with cosmonauts Alexsey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who were launched last September aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

McClain and her crewmates will spend two days getting briefed by Crew 9 on the intricacies of space station operations before Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams undock on March 16 for return to Earth. The normal “handover” period is five days or so, but mission managers shortened it this time around to maintain the lab’s food reserves.

While the ongoing saga of the “stranded” Starliner astronauts has overshadowed the Crew 10 mission, McClain said she and her crewmates began training for their mission in 2023 and they were all eager to finally get into space. McClain and Onishi are space station veterans while Ayers and Peskov are making their first flight.