New ISS crew takes over
In the new crew, McClain serves as the Crew-10 commander, with Ayers as the pilot and Onishi and Peskov as mission specialists. The four astronauts will remain aboard the ISS for approximately six months, the typical length of crew rotations.
Hague and Gorbunov arrived in late September as part of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, while Williams and Wilmore have been in orbit since early June after launching on the first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
The mission was initially expected to last about eight days, but during the rendezvous with the space station, the Starliner encountered propulsion system issues, and NASA ultimately decided against bringing the crew back on the spacecraft. In response, NASA reassigned Williams and Wilmore to an extended ISS mission and adjusted the Crew-9 launch by removing two astronauts to accommodate their eventual return.