SpaceX crew greeted abroad ISS. Photo:
Space_Station/X
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams got an out-of-this-world greeting in space!
On Sunday, March 16, the pair — who have been stranded in space for nine months — were surprised when Crew-9 commander Nick Hague greeted them wearing an alien costume as he docked with the SpaceX crew at the International Space Station.
In footage shared by the International Space Station on X, Hague is seen entering the hatch of the spacecraft wearing an alien face mask. He later floats towards a smiling Williams and Wilmore while pointing to something off-camera before moving offscreen.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi, and Kirill Peskov arrived on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at the ISS on the SpaceX and NASA’s Crew-10 mission to bring Wilmore and Williams home, at 12:04 a.m. EDT on Sunday, March 16, NASA confirmed in a press release.
The crew’s arrival comes after they took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 p.m. ET on Friday, March 14.
Photos taken on Sunday show SpaceX astronauts and crew members hugging Wilmore and Williams while deboarding the capsule.
NASA astronaut Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, have been in space since last September and are joining Wilmore and Williams on their flight back home.
Crew members onboard the International Space Station. NASA
Over the next few days, NASA said there will be a “crew handover period” as the astronauts make arrangements to return home safely.
“Following Dragon’s link up to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, the crew members aboard Dragon and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft and the station in preparation for hatch opening scheduled for approximately 1:45 a.m. on Sunday,” per the release.
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The SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft carrying four Crew-10 members. NASA
“Crew-10 will join the Expedition 72 crew of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Don Petitt, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner. The number of crew aboard the space station will increase to 11 people before Crew-9 members Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Gorbunov return to Earth following the crew handover period.”
The Dragon launch was initially supposed to take off on March 12, but a hydraulic issue delayed the flight.
Wilmore and Williams landed at the ISS in June 2024 and intended to stay in space for no more than 10 days. However, following mechanical issues with their spacecraft, they were delayed and the spacecraft was sent back to Earth without them weeks later.
