Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the station in late September, on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission. Williams and Wilmore have been in orbit since early June, when they launched on the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

A SpaceX rocket carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov lifted off Kennedy Space Center. This mission will allow astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to return home from the ISS.