CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The return to Earth of Boeing’s Starliner astronauts stuck on the International Space Station inched closer as their replacements arrived to Florida for their relief flight next week.

The quartet assigned to the SpaceX Crew-10 mission arrived to KSC having flown into the former space shuttle landing facility Thursday afternoon. They are slated to climb aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance and launch from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 as early as 7:48 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

NASA astronauts take up two of the four seats with commander Anne McClain and pilot Nichole Ayers. They’re joined by mission specialists Takuya Onishi with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

Their arrival to the ISS will mean the Crew-9 members will be able to fly home. That includes NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew up to the space station on Boeing Starliner’s Crew Flight Test mission last June, but were left behind on the ISS when NASA opted to send Starliner home uncrewed for safety reasons.

NASA then opted to line up their ride home as part of Crew-9, which flew up in the Crew Dragon Freedom last September with only two members — NASA commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, leaving room for Williams and Wilmore for the trip back.

While Hague and Gorbunov will have spent less than six months on board, Williams and Wilmore, who were originally expected as short as an eight-day stay, have already been in space for more than nine months.

McClain was the lone astronaut to speak upon landing. She said her crew has been in constant contact with Crew-9.

“We’re ready to high five them, bring them home in the coming weeks,” she said.

She also took an almost defensive stance about the importance of the space station, which recently was the target of an Elon Musk tirade on its utility, calling for it to be deorbited as soon as 2028.

“We’re not just flying up to space, just to fly up to space, right? We are going up to work on the International Space Station,” she said. “The International Space Station is our massive orbiting National Laboratory. OK? And up there we conduct hundreds of scientific science experiments every single day.”

She pointed out this is now the 25th year the ISS has been continuously crewed, and it has stood for unity among countries over the years.

“The International Space Station is really an asset for humans all across the world. It provides us a unique vantage point for which we can observe our own Earth. It provides us a unique environment for science investigations like in microgravity and in harsh conditions with radiation,” she said. “But I want to say that the International Space Station really operates under the mission of that NASA set forward, which is to be for the benefit of all. This is not for the benefit of our crew. It’s not for the benefit of any one country. It is for the benefit of all.”

She pointed out how daily lives have benefited such as research on Parkinson’s disease, cancer, Lasik surgery, osteoporosis and more.

She also called out leaders who threaten the unity the ISS represents.

“If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together,” she said.

“It is far easier to be enemies than it is to be friends, and it is far harder to build partnerships and build relationships than it is to break them,” she said. “You can break them in a day.”

She concluded by defending the mission of the ISS in the face of its detractors.

“It’s easier to critique than it is to participate,” she said. “The success of these programs rely on leaders of character from all countries, all walks of life, all agencies, all badges, all companies, leaders of character, visionaries who wake up every single day and work on a long-term plan for the benefit of all of us.”

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