place station astronaut Don Pettit has apportion a coolheaded time - lapse of SpaceX ’s Crew-10 Crew Dragon space vehicle arriving at the orbital facility on Sunday .

The footage , which runs more speedily than the actual amphetamine , express the ejector seat approaching the dockage port on the International Space Station ( ISS ) , which orbits at around 250 naut mi above Earth . Pettit posted a short and farsighted version of the spacecraft ’s independent coming :

Close Encounter but not of the third kind ; Longer version of Crew 10 docking to@Space_Stationpic.twitter.com/20ZxPglB1 1000

& mdash ; Don Pettit ( @astro_Pettit)March 16 , 2025

The four astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon — NASA ’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers , JAXA ( Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency ) spaceman Takuya Onishi , and Roscosmos spaceman Kirill Peskov — began their journey atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thatblasted off from the Kennedy Space Centerin Florida on Friday .

The flock 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 stationfor way longer than expected , as the arrival of Crew-10 pave the way for their proceeds to Earth .

Wilmore and Williams — both experient astronauts — get at the ISS in June 2024 on the first crew flight of the Boeing - built Starliner spacecraft . The pair were only supposed to stick around in celestial orbit for eight day , but technical issues with the spacecraft prompt NASA to err on the side of caveat and work the vehicle family empty . The situation get out them waiting for ISS mission scheduler to work out the easy means to get them home .

The “ rescue mission ” that some intelligence reports verbalise of was never necessary as both spaceman could comfortably live and sour on the ISS , alongside their colleagues , for an extended geological period . But a program was still needed to take them home .

In the ending , NASA determine to stick with its six - month ISS crew rotation docket , but line up the Crew-9 military mission , which launched last September with only two astronauts instead of the common four . The spare seat on Crew-9 will be used by Wilmore and Williams when they revert to Earth in the come in days , pursue their relief by the newly arrived Crew-10 .

Although it was n’t supposed to be this way , Willmore and Williams ’ mission is a rarified example of astronauts traveling to orbit in one spacecraft and give in a different one .

“ We ’re actually worked up to fly in two dissimilar ballistic capsule , ” Williams said in an audience from orbit last decline , adding : “ We ’re tester . ”

remark on the billet in the first place this month , Wilmore said : “ We came up prepared to stay long , even though we plan to stick around poor . That ’s what we do in human space trajectory . That ’s what your human space flight of stairs political program is all about — planning for unknown , unexpected contingencies . ”