Washington, DC [US], March 16 (ANI): SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov docked with International Space Station, Space X CEO Elon Musk announced on Sunday.

In a post on X, Musk posted, 'SpaceX Dragon docks with Space Station.'

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1901151139447349513

In a statement, NASA stated, 'NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the orbiting complex at 12:04 a.m. EDT, while the station was roughly 260 statute miles over the Atlantic Ocean.'

After SpaceX Dragon's link-up to the forward facing port of the station's Harmony module, the crew members aboard Dragon and the space station will start conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft and the station in preparation for a hatch opening scheduled for approximately 1:45 am (US time) on Sunday.

Crew-10 will join the Expedition 72 crew of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Don Petitt, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner, according to the statement released by NASA. The number of crew aboard the space station will rise to 11 people before Crew-9 members Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Gorbunov return to Earth after the crew handover period.

On Friday, SpaceX and NASA launched a mission to bring back US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS, where they have been stranded for nine months. The lift-off took place at 7:03 ET on Friday, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission.

The launch came after US President Donald Trump urged SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to rescue the stranded astronauts sooner than NASA had planned. He has repeatedly accused former US President Joe Biden of abandoning them in space.

On March 7, Trump said that he has authorised Elon Musk to bring back American astronauts- Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore who have been stranded at the International Space station since June last year.

Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stranded on the ISS for nine months after reaching there in June last year. They were supposed to stay there for about a week.

The astronauts were transported from Earth to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft However, the spacecraft came back to Earth unmanned in September. This came after Starliner faced 'helium leaks' and 'issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters' while docking with the ISS, Fox News reported. (ANI)