Musk's SPACEX Launches Relief Mission to Bring Home Stranded Astronauts (3/14/25)

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully took off Friday night from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, on a mission to deliver four new astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

The new team is scheduled to arrive at the station on late on Saturday. Once there, astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will finally be able to return to Earth at some point on or shortly after March 19.

The pair have been stranded in orbit since June 5, with SpaceX owner Elon Musk and many others claiming Williams and Wilmore were left on the ISS for political reasons.

The duo were initially scheduled for an eight day mission.

Musk said he offered to bring the astronauts home eight months ago, but the Biden Administration shot it down because it would've made Donald Trump 'look good' in the presidential race against former vice president Kamala Harris.

The successful takeoff comes after the Crew-10 mission was scrubbed on the launch pad due to mechanical issues just minutes before launch on Wednesday.

Crew-10 includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi, and Russia's Kirill Peskov.

The new crew will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint.

Alongside Williams and Wilmore, NASA's Nick Hague and Russia's Aleksandr Gorbunov will be returning home on board SpaceX's Crew-9 Dragon capsule that is already docked at the ISS.

Last year's presidential race seems to be at the heart of why the astronauts have been stuck in space so long.

Musk backed Trump during the 2024 presidential race, donating $288 million to his campaign and appearing at several MAGA rallies

During a recent press briefing, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate, admitted that there 'may have been conversations' in the Biden White House about delaying the return for political optics of having Trump's most famous donor save the day, but he was not part of the discussions.

Wednesday's Crew-10 launch was called off due to a hydraulic system issue with the Falcon 9 rocket. NASA said teams were working to address the problem.

NASA had moved up the return mission by two weeks after after President Trump told Musk to 'go get' Williams and Wilmore.

Before the president's request, the astronauts were not coming back earlier than March 26.

'It's been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,' Williams said of her family.

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