The rescue of the astronauts trapped in space in the Starliner spacecraft already has a launch date, which will be on March 12. The Crew-10 rocket will be in charge of carrying out this operation, which Elon Musk has celebrated on his Twitter (X), in what is a t operation between NASA and SpaceX.
"@NASA and @SpaceX are advancing the target launch and return dates for the crew rotation missions to and from @Space_Station. The agency's Crew-10 launch is scheduled for Wednesday, March 12, pending mission readiness and completion of the agency's certification process for flight readiness," they said in a tweet.
"The Crew-9 mission is scheduled to return to Earth after a multi-day handover period with the newly arrived Crew-10 expedition crew," NASA Space Operations said in a tweet. "Coming home", the tech mogul said, responding to this other post.
NASA and SpaceX, increasingly close
"Manned spaceflight is full of unexpected challenges. Our operational flexibility is facilitated by the tremendous partnership between NASA and SpaceX, and the agility that SpaceX continues to demonstrate to safely meet the agency's emerging needs," explained Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager.
"We greatly benefit from SpaceX's commercial efforts and their proactive approach to having another spacecraft ready for us to evaluate and use in of Crew 10," he said.
In this way, the Crew-10 mission will transport NASA astronauts Anne McClain, commander, and Nichole Ayers, pilot, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, mission specialist, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, also mission specialist, to the space station.