NASA removed two astronauts from its Crew-9 mission to allow for Williams and Wilmore to join the cohort, and return onboard the SpaceX Dragon − which carries four people at a time. The altered Crew-9 − only Hague and Gorbunov − launched aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom in late September.

NASA is about to give its first press conference just a couple of hours after Crew-9 returned from the space station in a nine-month mission that was only supposed to last eight days.