The arrival of Crew-10 paves the way for the return of NASA astronauts Williams and Wilmore and their Crew-9 mates Nick Hague (NASA) and Aleksandr Gorbunov (Roscosmos). Williams's and Wilmore's return was delayed due to problems faced by Boeing 's Starliner spacecraft that brought them to ISS in the first place.

SpaceX launched a crewed NASA mission on Friday to return two astronauts from the International Space Station, after technical issues with Boeing’s spacecraft extended their stay for nine months, leading SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump to suggest they were stranded for “political reasons.”

SpaceX's Crew-10 mission has successfully launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03PM Eastern on March 14. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are onboard and will join the ISS crew after the spacecraft docks with the orbiting lab at 11:30PM Eastern time on March 15.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams need SpaceX to get this relief team to the space station before they can check out.

The Falcon 9 rocket is carrying four astronauts who will replace Wilmore and Williams, both of whom are veteran NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots and were the first to fly Boeing's faulty Starliner capsule to the ISS in June.