Because NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams won’t return until late February. Officials said there wasn’t a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.

The launch from Cape Canaveral Space Center in Florida on Saturday delivered a Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, where Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stranded since their Boeing Starliner craft malfunctioned and was forced to return to Earth empty earlier this month.

The Falcon 9 is temporarily grounded after an anomaly was detected following the launch of a Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. View on euronews