Col. Nick Hague, a Space Force Guardian and NASA astronaut, launched Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as part of the SpaceX Dragon Crew-9 mission.

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.

Crew-9 is the ninth crew rotation mission to the space station with SpaceX under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The crew is set to spend about five months in the orbiting laboratory, conducting spacewalks, research, and experiments before returning to Earth in February 2025 with Williams and Wilmore.

SpaceX launched a two-person crew to the International Space Station, the start of a mission to bring home two NASA astronauts stuck in orbit after flying on Boeing Co.’s Starliner spacecraft.

After multiple delays, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission finally launched two astronauts into space on Saturday from Cape Canaveral.The mission took off at 1:17 p.m. on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the International Space Station.