A Cloud-Kissing Dawn: Crew-9 Finally Leaves Earth
Washed by golden November sunshine, Cape Canaveral waited an extra twenty-four hours to roar back to life
A slender Falcon 9 rose above the Atlantic haze at 11:43 a.m. EDT Friday, bearing four new residents of humanity’s outpost 250 miles above the planet.
• Commander Zena Cardman – the mission’s steady hand
• Mike Fincke, NASA veteran – now serving as co-pilot
• Kimiya Yui, JAXA – stationed on the left-seat screen bank
• Oleg Platonov, Roscosmos – positioned on the right
The Final Countdown—Again
Ground controllers eyed drifting cumulus all morning, ready to halt the sequence if the clouds thickened. Instead, the sky held just long enough:
Next Stop: Harmony
Inside the capsule, the quartet monitored digital dials while the vehicle unfolded its nose-mounted solar arrays. Ahead lies a day-long chase, culminating in an automated docking to the station’s Harmony port and the beginning of a six-month science tour.
A Long-Awaited Dawn
At 9:16 a.m. Eastern on the first of August, the Florida coastline cracked open with light as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 thundered away from historic Pad 39A. Four explorers perched atop the slender pencil of flame now begin a ballet that bridges Earth and the International Space Station. For rookie astronaut Jeanette Cardman the moment was surreal; her voice came down on NASA’s open channel laced with wonder.
“I have no emotions but joy right now. That was transcendent— the ride of a lifetime. Thank you; this has been an incredible honor.”
Veteran Michael Fincke, riding into orbit for the fourth time, echoed the sentiment from Crew Dragon Endeavour’s mid-deck.
“Boy, it’s great to be back in space,” he called, “Thank you to SpaceX and NASA. What a ride!”
Scrubbings, Skies, and Second Chances
- A Thursday lift-off had been scripted yet scrapped when storm cells mushroomed above the Cape and controllers halted the count with only 67 seconds remaining.
- The following morning the same weather demons hovered, but a thinning upper-level cloud deck and improved downrange tracking finally flashed “go.”
- Rather than the originally planned 40-hour chase, the Friday departure set up a swift 16-hour sprint toward the station’s Harmony module.
The Falcon’s Choreography
T+2 minutes 31 seconds into the climb, nine Merlin engines on the first stage shut down, separated, and began their return dance. Spinning tail-first, the booster re-ignited three engines, carved an arc of fire across the Atlantic sky, and settled itself flawlessly on Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The touchdown marks:
- SpaceX’s 65th recovery in Florida alone.
- Its global 484th successful booster landing since debuting the routine in 2015.
One minute after the stage touched down, the vacuum-optimized engine on the second stage went silent, releasing Endeavour to finish the journey under its own thrusters.
Dream Deferred, Dream Delivered
For Cardman the ascent closes a chapter that almost opened eleven months earlier. She had been tapped to command an earlier Crew Dragon rotation last fall, only to be reassigned—along with crewmate Stephanie Wilson—to clear two seats for Boeing Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who faced an unexpectedly long stay aboard the station. Friday’s launch puts that revised timeline squarely in her rear-view mirror as Earth drifts slowly below Endeavour’s seven-window cupola.
What Comes Next
Arrival at the space-facing port of Harmony is slated for 3 a.m. Saturday. Hatch opening, a quick safety briefing, and a family downlink are on the docket before the four newest members of Expedition 73 begin six months of science, repairs, and orbital living.
Crew Dragon Bound for Orbit Receives Final Crew Lineup
At the foot of the launch pad, four figures in charcoal-gray flight suits strode toward the sleek white capsule that will carry them into orbit. Their line-up tells a bigger story than a simple head count ever could.
- Commander Zena Cardman – geobiologist and former backup crew member promoted to lead
- Mike Fincke – the 58-year-old spaceflight legend logging his fourth trip beyond the atmosphere
- Kimiya Yui – Japan’s former fighter pilot and now multi-week ISS resident
- Oleg Platonov – first-timer from Roscosmos representing Russia under a long-standing seat-exchange protocol
How Cardman Found Herself Back in the Captain’s Chair
Only months ago Cardman and fellow astronaut Stephanie Wilson had yielded their Dragon seats to Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams. The pair had ridden Boeing’s Starliner on its inaugural crewed mission in June 2024. Thruster failures and helium leaks persuaded NASA to bring the capsule home empty weeks later, forcing Wilmore and Williams to stretch their orbital tour well past the original checkout flight. NASA then juggled crew manifests, ultimately sliding Wilson onto the flight-assignment shelf and resurrecting Cardman as commander of Crew 11.
Asked how she reconciled the shuffle, Cardman spoke with the calm of someone who has learned to navigate 90-minute orbital dawn-dusk cycles:
“If I judged this only through the lens of personal disappointment, the storyline would be different. But human spaceflight does not exist for any single traveler; it exists for the collective dream of living and working off-planet. I get to train next to three people whose brilliance continually humbles me. That’s the privilege I’m holding on to.”
Fincke and Yui Swap One Capsule for Another
Mike Fincke had devoted thousands of simulator hours to Starliner—yet like so many in the program, his berth evaporated when technical gremlins turned the CST-100 mission into an uncrewed return. The silver lining is a fourth ticket stamped “Crew Dragon.”
Kimiya Yui, who once trained shoulder-to-shoulder with Fincke on a prospective Starliner flight profile, now finds himself sharing the same Dragon checklist.
Why a Cosmonaut Rides an American Capsule
Oleg Platonov’s presence on Crew 11 is no last-minute addition. Under a cross-agency contingency plan—often nicknamed the “seat-swap ballet”—crews are mixed so that, in the event one vehicle must depart the station in a hurry, at least one American and one Russian crew member remain aboard the ISS. Platonov marks the seventh cosmonaut to strap into a Dragon under this agreement, strengthening a partnership that has quietly kept the outpost staffed through launch delays, air leaks, and even international tensions on Earth.
Countdown Clock Ticks for Mid-Year Lift-Off
The quartet will soon slip through the crew access arm and into the climate-controlled Dragon cabin at historic Launch Complex 39A. If schedules hold, the sky above Florida’s Space Coast will flame orange around mid-year, propelling Crew 11 toward the ISS—and proving, once again, that resilience in space begins with flexibility on the ground.
A long-awaited mission aboard the space station
The Space Torch Passes: Crew 11 Arrives as Crew 10 Wraps Up 145 Days in Orbit
A warm orbital handshake: when NASA’s Crew 11 step through the station’s hatch, they will be greeted by outgoing Expedition members Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi and Kirill Peskov—the quartet that launched on 14 March. Waiting beside them will be Russia’s MS-27/73S trio—Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky, and NASA flight surgeon Jonny Kim—who rode a Soyuz skyward from Baikonur on 8 April.
A belated birthday box from home
- Zena Cardman already has cargo stowed aboard: clothing and deeply personal keepsakes tucked into a Dragon’s trunk long before last year’s schedule shuffle robbed her of Crew 9.
- Among the items sits one card that matters more than the rest—a handwritten birthday greeting from her physicist father, who died in August 2024 just weeks after the crew reassignment.
- This October she will turn 38 while sailing 400 km above Earth. Looking ahead, she said, “It feels like my whole story is up here with me. Opening that card will be like hugging my dad across both distance and time.”
Crew 10’s swansong
After 145 days of nonstop science, spacewalks and meticulous maintenance, McClain, Ayers, Onishi and Peskov plan to cast off their Crew Dragon on 6 August, splashing down off southern California. Their highlights reel spans:
- a six-and-a-half-hour outside excursion by McClain and Ayers;
- more than 200 science investigations ranging from plant biology to combustion physics;
- critical upgrades to the station’s power and cooling systems.
Coming home: the small luxuries they say they miss most
- Anne McClain grinned when asked about first-day plans: “I’m kind of looking forward to doing nothing for forty-eight hours.”
- Takuya Onishi already counts the minutes until “the longest, hottest shower gravity can give.”
The seamless hand-off now underway is more than logistics—it’s a quiet reminder of how life aboard the station keeps orbiting, even as the faces change.
Eleven More Humans Join an Orbit City
A fresh squad of voyagers is about to turn the International Space Station into a temporary village of eighteen souls. The newcomers, known as Crew 11, will slide beside seven long-duration residents now calling the outpost home.
Who’s Already Up There
Below decks, the ten-seat Soyuz serves as a lifeboat for two:
Mid-section neighbors
Upward gazers
Down-to-Earth Cravings
Seconds before launch, pilot Nichole Ayers confessed her biggest post-mission fantasy: “That perfect burger on an ocean beach—grilled, juicy, and the salt breeze hitting my face.” Alongside her, McClain and Onishi will also miss the planet’s kaleidoscope sliding past their cupola window.
A Countdown to Farewell
Washington’s planners have penciled 2030 as the station’s final curtain call. To perform the last rites:
Leak Drama: Russian Fissure Still Drips
A sneaky breach discovered in 2019 keeps orbital engineers on alert.
Cosmonauts have patched it repeatedly, yet a faint hiss continues. This past summer the Axiom 4 launch was briefly frozen when sensors spotted an iffy hatch seal—but fresh tests confirm the barrier will still clamp shut when needed, protecting the bulk of the station’s atmosphere.
Reassuring Words
“The entire spacecraft beyond this pocket remains leak-tight,” emphasized Bill Spetch, NASA’s integration operations manager. “Our real-time telemetry shows zero concerning changes anywhere else.”Adding her own seal of approval, Commander McClain noted from orbit:
“We feel very safe.”
