NASA and billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a fresh crew to the International Space Station (ISS), paving the way for stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to return home after nine long months. The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 4:33 am (IST) after a brief delay on Thursday.

The crew of four astronauts include – Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

Crew-10 is the 10th crew rotation mission under SpaceX’s human space transportation system and the 11th flight with a crew aboard to the ISS station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, including the Demo-2 test flight. The mission was delayed on Thursday due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm.

NASA’s veteran astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stuck aboard the ISS in June last year