WASHINGTON, Sept 30, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - The SpaceX crew that will ferry back

two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station docked with the
orbiting laboratory Sunday, a live stream of the mission showed.

The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral,
Florida on Saturday, with the Crew-9 mission on a Dragon spacecraft making
contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm Sunday.

After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut
Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their
floating colleagues on the space station.

"What a fabulous day it was today," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said
at a news conference.

When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will
bring back two space veterans -- Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams -- whose
stay on the ISS was prolonged for months due to problems with their Boeing-
designed Starliner spacecraft.

The newly developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it
delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June.

They were supposed to be there for only an eight-day stay, but after problems
with the Starliner's propulsion system emerged during the flight there, NASA
was forced to weigh a radical change in plans.

After weeks of intensive tests on the Starliner's reliability, the space
agency finally decided to return it to Earth without its crew, and to bring
the two stranded astronauts back home on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission.

SpaceX, the private company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has been flying
regular missions every six months to allow the rotation of ISS crews.

But the launch of Crew-9 was postponed from mid-August to late September to
give NASA experts more time to evaluate the reliability of the Starliner and
decide how to proceed.

It was then delayed a few more days by the destructive passage of Hurricane
Helene, a powerful storm that roared into the opposite side of Florida on
Thursday.

In total, Hague and Gorbunov will spend some five months on the ISS; Wilmore
and Williams, eight months.

In all, Crew-9 will conduct some 200 scientific experiments.