Two-Person Crew-9 Enroute to the ISS

Two new crew members for the International Space Station lifted off this afternoon in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom beginning NASA’s Crew-9 mission. ISS crew rotation missions are relatively routine, but this one is a bit different. Not only is it the first crewed launch from SpaceX’s complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, but only two instead of four people are onboard. The other two original members of Crew-9 gave up their seats so they could be used by two astronauts already on the ISS who need a ride home.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov became the first people to launch from SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) today at 1:17 pm ET.

Liftoff of Crew-9! pic.twitter.com/laQRTLp4vC

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 28, 2024

They will spend the next 28 hours on the way to the ISS, docking at 5:30 pm ET tomorrow. After a several-day handover, they’ll replace Crew-8, which has been aboard since March. NASA is targeting October 7 for Crew-8’s return.

All previous Crew Dragon missions left from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, adjacent to CCSFS, which SpaceX leases from NASA. SLC-40 has been used only for launching satellites until now, but several years ago SpaceX and NASA decided it would useful to have a second launch pad for crews considering the increasing number of launches taking place from Florida these days. The decision was fortuitous because LC-39A was tied up first with the Polaris Dawn launch and now is being reconfigured to launch NASA’s Europa Clipper mission on October 10.

Originally that wouldn’t have been a problem because Crew-9 was supposed to launch in August, but the mission was delayed while NASA decided what to do about the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) that delivered Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS in June. Concerned about problems with Starliner’s propulsion system, NASA ultimately decided to bring Starliner back to Earth empty, leaving Butch and Suni on the ISS.

The simplest solution to getting them home was to make them part of Crew-9 and return with them at the end of their increment in February 2025. Butch and Suni are experienced Navy test pilots and NASA astronauts who both have already spent long-duration missions on the ISS, so extending their stay wasn’t a problem. They’ll be there for eight months instead of eight days, but it’s not the first time crews have had to stay longer than planned for a variety of reasons and their duration is well short of the ISS record just set by two Russian cosmonauts of 374 days.

Unfortunately, however, it meant that two of the four original members of Crew-9 had to step aside and wait for another opportunity to fly so Butch and Suni could have their seats for the return.

NASA decided that Hague and Gorbunov would fly and Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson would stay behind.

Keeping Gorbunov on the crew was widely expected since U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts routinely fly on each other’s spacecraft to ensure that at least one American and one Russian are aboard the ISS to operate the interdependent U.S. and Russian segments.

Wilson flew on three space shuttle missions, but is not trained as a commander. That was Cardman’s role. The decision to keep Hague and not Cardman was more surprising.

NASA explained they needed someone in the commander’s seat who had spaceflight experience and Cardman is a rookie. Hague is on his third spaceflight and holds the distinction of having survived an in-flight launch abort on a Russian rocket in October 2018. He and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Soyuz FG rocket, but one of the four solid rocket boosters strapped to the side hit the rocket when it detached two minutes and 45 seconds later. The Soyuz rocket is designed with automated abort systems that separated their capsule and boosted it high enough to escape the disintegrating rocket and make a safe landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan 34 minutes later. NASA decided that the capsule, Soyuz MS-10, rose high enough that they count that episode as a spaceflight.

Hague and Ovchinin got all the way to the ISS on their second try in February 2019 on Soyuz MS-12 when they were joined by NASA astronaut Christina Koch. Hague and Ovchinin will be reuited tomorrow when Crew-9 docks at the ISS.  Ovchinin arrived on September 11 as part of a Russian crew exchange that includes NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos’s Ivan Vagner.

By tradition, a small object is brought along by crews to serve as a “zero gravity indicator” that floats once the spacecraft reaches orbit and they are weightless. Often it’s something chosen by their children, but today Hague reused the one he had on his previous flights: “We’ve got a falcon on board with us. This one’s a multi-flyer, though, was on my first flight with Aleksey and I, and with Aleskey and I and Christina, and now me and Alex, so say hello to Aurora.”

Just before liftoff, Hague expressed thanks “to the entire team around the world,” “families and friends for your unwavering support,” and “Crew-9, unbreakable, we do this together.”

Cardman and Wilson are being heralded for taking the disappointment of seeing their colleagues lift off without them with professionalism. Cardman co-hosted NASA’s launch coverage today with Derrol Nail from NASA’s Office of Communications and Wilson stopped by for part of it. Nail asked what they were feeling and they replied they are part of a team that trained together for a year and a half and are excited to see their teammates fly. But Cardman acknowledged it’s “bittersweet.”

I think it was hard not to watch that rocket lift off without thinking that’s my rocket and that’s my crew. But I also know that I’m not the only person who can think that. Of course we have Stephanie Wilson here today.  But I mean there are many, many people who made this mission happen and there are people in orbit who will be taking this capsule home and it makes me very proud to know that I am one of many people who can say “that’s my crew, that’s my rocket.”

Makes me really proud, makes me feel very connected to this mission that we all get to take part of. Go Crew-9!   — Zena Cardman