The capsule that will carry the next crew to the International Space Station has reached the SpaceX hangar at the mission’s launch pad.
The Crew Dragon Endurance will ferry the next set of astronauts to the International Station (ISS). That mission, called Crew-10, is set to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than March 12, with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov on board. The quartet are headed for a roughly six-month stay aboard the orbital lab, relieving the Crew-9 astronauts currently wrapping up their rotation.
Two members of Crew-9, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, arrived at the ISS well ahead of their crewmates, Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Williams and Wilmore launched to the space station in June 2024, on the first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. After Starliner experienced some malfunctions, NASA opted to return the spacecraft to Earth without its crew onboard, out of an abundance of caution. That decision meant integrating the Starliner astronauts into Crew-9, which arrived at the ISS some months later, in September. This also extended Williams and Wilmore’s mission from about 10 days to nearly ten months in space.
The arrival of Crew-10 to the ISS will mark an imminent departure for the Starliner duo and the rest of Crew-9. As is typical with handovers on the space station, crews overlap to ensure a smooth transition of station maintenance and research responsibilities while the new residents find their space legs.
Crew-9 launched with Hague and Gorbunov and two empty seats for Williams and Wilmore on the return journey, aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom. Freedom has been docked to the ISS since its arrival in late September, and will serve as the ride home for all four astronauts a week or so following Crew-10’s docking.
Crew-10 was originally slated to fly a new Crew Dragon being manufactured by SpaceX to add to the company’s fleet, with a targeted launch date sometime in February. Last December, however, NASA announced a delay in the mission to “no earlier than late March,” to allow time for SpaceX to complete maintenance on the new spacecraft.
Further delays on the Crew-10 Dragon, apparently combined with political pressure — as seen in online posts by President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk to bring home the “stranded” Starliner astronauts as soon as possible — prompted NASA to reassign the Crew-10 spacecraft to a Dragon that could be ready to fly sooner.
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Enter Endurance, the Dragon that has already flown three SpaceX astronaut missions — Crew-3, Crew-5 and Crew-7. The flight-proven spacecraft was readied for launch and has now reached SpaceX’s hangar at Launch Complex-39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.
SpaceX shared photos of the arrival, which apparently occurred sometime overnight, in a post on March 5. “Dragon arrives at the hangar at pad 39A ahead of next week’s launch of @NASA’s Crew-10 mission to the @Space_Station,” the company said. Next, Endurance will be mated to its Falcon 9 launch vehicle and undergo final checkouts before rolling out to the launch pad.
Dragon arrives at the hangar at pad 39A ahead of next week’s launch of @NASA’s Crew-10 mission to the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/cjb3f9jNZUMarch 5, 2025
Crew-10 is currently scheduled to launch at 7:48 p.m. EDT (2348 GMT) on March 12 and will take about 14 hours to catch up to the ISS. Barring a delay to the current targeted launch date, Endurance is scheduled to dock with the space station at approximately 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on Thursday (March 13), which would put Crew-9 on a timeline to return to Earth before the end of the month.
A livestream of the Crew-10 launch will be available on the Space.com homepage beginning at 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT) on March 12, as well as on NASA’s NASA+ streaming service. Docking coverage will begin the next day, March 13, at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT), with an expected hatch opening around 11:45 a.m. EDT (1545 GMT).
