Space station astronaut Don Pettit has shared a cool time-lapse of SpaceX’s Crew-10 Crew Dragon spacecraft arriving at the orbital facility on Sunday.
The footage, which runs more quickly than the actual speed, shows the capsule approaching the docking port on the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits at around 250 miles above Earth. Pettit posted a short and long version of the spacecraft’s autonomous approach:
Close Encounter but not of the third kind; Longer version of Crew 10 docking to @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/20ZxPglB1K
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) March 16, 2025
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The four astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon — NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — began their journey atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday.
The sight of the approaching capsule will have been a welcome one for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who’ve had to stay on the space station for way longer than expected, as the arrival of Crew-10 paves the way for their return to Earth.
Wilmore and Williams — both experienced astronauts — arrived at the ISS in June 2024 on the first crewed flight of the Boeing-built Starliner spacecraft. The pair were only supposed to stay in orbit for eight days, but technical issues with the spacecraft prompted NASA to err on the side of caution and bring the vehicle home empty. The situation left them waiting for ISS mission schedulers to work out the easiest way to get them home.
The “rescue mission” that some news reports spoke of was never necessary as both astronauts could comfortably live and work on the ISS, alongside their colleagues, for an extended period. But a plan was still needed to bring them home.
In the end, NASA decided to stick with its six-month ISS crew rotation schedule, but adjusted the Crew-9 mission, which launched last September with only two astronauts instead of the usual four. The spare seats on Crew-9 will be used by Wilmore and Williams when they return to Earth in the coming days, following their relief by the newly arrived Crew-10.
Although it wasn’t supposed to be this way, Willmore and Williams’ mission is a rare example of astronauts traveling to orbit in one spacecraft and returning in a different one.
“We’re actually excited to fly in two different spacecraft,” Williams said in an interview from orbit last fall, adding: “We’re testers.”
Commenting on the situation earlier this month, Wilmore said: “We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That’s what we do in human space flight. That’s what your human space flight program is all about — planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies.”