Starliner astronauts' return to Earth finally near as replacement crew readies to launch to space station
CBSN
NASA is finally ready to launch its next space station crew, clearing the way for Starliner astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams to head back to Earth more than nine months after they took off on what they thought would be an eight-day stay in space.
Crew 10 commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are scheduled for launch from historic pad 39 at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:48 p.m. EDT Wednesday. If all goes well, they will catch up with the space station Thursday, moving in for docking at the lab's forward port at 6 a.m.
Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams, along with cosmonauts Alexsey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who were launched last September aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
