CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA and SpaceX are on track to launch the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) at 7:03 p.m. EDT on Friday, March 14, 2025, following successful resolution of a ground support hydraulics issue. SpaceX engineers completed inspections and flushed a trapped air pocket in the clamp arm system supporting the Falcon 9 rocket, ensuring mission readiness. Live coverage begins at 3:00 p.m. on NASA+.
Weather forecasts are highly favorable, with a greater-than-95% chance of acceptable conditions at the Space Coast launch site. The Atlantic coast trajectory for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft also looks clear, though weather violation risks rise to 50% on Saturday, March 15, and 60% on Sunday, March 16. Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at Kennedy Space Center, praised the teams’ swift action: “I am extremely proud of our NASA and SpaceX ground engineers… Their commitment to excellence and safety is a testament to this integrated team.”
The Crew-10 mission will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov aboard a Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9. Launched as part of Expedition 72/73, the crew will conduct dozens of science experiments during their several-month stay, docking at approximately 11:30 p.m. on March 15. They will spend days familiarizing themselves with station systems before rotating roles with the SpaceX Crew-9 team—NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—whose undocking is slated for no earlier than March 19.
Crew-10 marks NASA’s 10th crew rotation and SpaceX’s 11th crewed flight to the ISS under the Commercial Crew Program, including the 2020 Demo-2 test. The ISS, a collaboration of 15 nations, hosts continuous human presence since 2000, supporting over 3,000 experiments, per NASA data. This mission underscores the partnership’s reliability, with SpaceX launching 50 missions in 2024 alone, though the tight weather window adds pressure to the March 14 slot.
