In a written statement from NASA, it was reported that the Dragon capsule was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with the Falcon 9 rocket within the scope of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission.
In the statement, it was stated that NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will conduct more than 200 scientific research on subjects such as blood clotting, humidity in plants grown in space, and changes in astronauts’ vision in space, within the scope of their 5-month mission at the ISS.
Following the completion of the Crew-9 mission, it was noted that the two astronauts, who were sent to the space station for a short time but were stranded in the space station since the beginning of June as a result of the malfunction of Boeing’s Starliner shuttle, will return to Earth in February 2025 with Hague and Gorbunov.
THE STARLINER SHUTTLE SENT BY BOEING TO SPACE WAS MALFUNCTIONED
After two postponements, Boeing sent the Starliner shuttle, carrying two NASA astronauts named Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, into space for the first time on June 5.
Despite the investigations carried out on the shuttle, which detected a helium leak, the source of the problem could not be found and the return of the vehicle to Earth was postponed 4 times.
Deciding that it was too risky to bring 2 astronauts back to Earth with Boeing’s faulty capsule, NASA announced that the astronauts would be kept in space until February 2025. Accordingly, the test flight, which should have lasted 1 week for the astronauts, will have lasted more than 8 months.
Later, NASA announced that the Starliner shuttle returned to Earth without a crew.
