Sep 30, 2024 07:53 am IST Published On The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday. Washington: The SpaceX crew that will ferry back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station docked with the orbiting laboratory Sunday, a live stream of the mission showed. The Falcon 9 rocket took off at 1:17 pm (1717 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, with the Crew-9 mission on a Dragon spacecraft making contact with the ISS at 5:30 pm Sunday. After docking was completed, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov boarded the station just after 7:00 pm, embracing their floating colleagues on the space station. "What a fabulous day it was today," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said at a news conference. When Hague and Gorbunov return from the space station in February, they will bring back two space veterans -- Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams -- whose stay on the ISS was prolonged for months due to problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft. The newly developed Starliner was making its first crewed flight when it delivered Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June. Welcome, #Crew9! After floating through the Dragon's hatch, our new arrivals join the crew aboard the @Space_Station. They'll spend five months conducting @ISS_Research and maintenance on the orbiting lab. pic.twitter.com/DJX7f9vxlg