SpaceX launches a new crew to the space station to replace NASA's stuck astronauts

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts launched to the International Space Station on Friday night, paving the way for the pair’s return after nine long months.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams need SpaceX to get this relief team to the space station before they can check out. Arrival is set for late Saturday night.

NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting.

The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.

Reaching orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free.

“Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher," McClain said minutes into the flight.

As test pilots for Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week or so when they launched from Cape Canaveral on June 5. A series of helium leaks and thruster failures marred their trip to the space station, setting off months of investigation by NASA and Boeing on how best to proceed.

Eventually ruling it unsafe, NASA ordered Starliner to fly back empty last September and moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight due back in February. Their return was further delayed when SpaceX’s brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs before launching their replacements. To save a few weeks, SpaceX switched to a used capsule, moving up Wilmore and Williams’ homecoming to mid-March.

Already capturing the world’s attention, their unexpectedly long mission took a political twist when President Donald Trump and SpaceX’s Elon Musk vowed earlier this year to accelerate the astronauts’ return and blamed the former administration for stalling it.

Retired Navy captains who have lived at the space station before, Wilmore and Williams have repeatedly stressed that they support the decisions made by their NASA bosses since last summer. The two helped keep the station running — fixing a broken toilet, watering plants and conducting experiments — and even went out on a spacewalk together. With nine spacewalks, Williams set a new record for women: the most time spent spacewalking over a career.

A last-minute hydraulics issue delayed Wednesday's initial launch attempt. Concern arose over one of the two clamp arms on the Falcon rocket’s support structure that needs to tilt away right before liftoff. SpaceX later flushed out the arm's hydraulics system, removing trapped air.

The duo's extended stay has been hardest, they said, on their families — Wilmore’s wife and two daughters, and Williams’ husband and mother. Besides reuniting with them, Wilmore, a church elder, is looking forward to getting back to face-to-face ministering and Williams can’t wait to walk her two Labrador retrievers.

“We appreciate all the love and support from everybody,” Williams said in an interview earlier this week. “This mission has brought a little attention. There’s goods and bads to that. But I think the good part is more and more people have been interested in what we’re doing” with space exploration.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

Photographer Craig Bailey resets his remote cameras with fresh batteries to cover this evening's scheduled launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft for a mission to the International Space Station on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft stands ready for a mission to the International Space Station on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi leaves the Operations and Checkout building before heading to Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Cosmonaut Kirill Peskov waves as he leaves the Operations and Checkout building before heading to Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Astronaut Nichole Ayers leaves the Operations and Checkout building before heading to Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Astronaut Anne McClain leaves the Operations and Checkout building before heading to Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

Crew10 members, from left, cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, astronaut Nichole Ayers, astronaut Anne McClain and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi leave the Operations and Checkout building before heading to Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he’s dropping — for now — his push to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, a move that comes after legal roadblocks held up the effort.

“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!" he said in a social media post Wednesday.

Governors typically control states' National Guardsmen, and Trump had deployed troops to all three cities against the wishes of state and local Democratic leaders. He said it was necessary as part of a broader crackdown on immigration, crime and protests.

The president has made a crackdown on crime in cities a centerpiece of his second term — and has toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to stop his opponents from using the courts to block his plans. He has said he sees his tough-on-crime approach as a winning political issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Troops had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration.

In his post, Trump said the troops' presence was responsible for a drop in crime in the three cities, though they were never on the streets in Chicago and Portland as legal challenges played out. When the Chicago deployment was challenged in court, a Justice Department lawyer said the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government agents in the field, not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s office in a statement said the city’s reduction in crime was due to the efforts of local police and public safety programs. Chicago officials echoed the sentiment, saying in a release Tuesday that the city had 416 homicides in 2025 — the fewest since 2014.

Trump’s push to deploy the troops in Democrat-led cities has been met with legal challenges at nearly every turn.

The Supreme Court in December refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area. The order was not a final ruling but was a significant and rare setback by the high court for the president’s efforts.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on X Wednesday that Trump “lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down.”

Hundreds of troops from California and Oregon were deployed to Portland, but a federal judge barred them from going on the streets. A judge permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there in November after a three-day trial.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement Wednesday that her office had not yet received “official notification that the remaining federalized Oregon National Guard troops can return home. They were never lawfully deployed to Portland and there was no need for their presence. If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops, that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.”

Trump's decision to federalize National Guard troops began in Los Angeles in June, when protesters took to the streets in response to a blitz of immigration arrests in the area. He deployed about 4,000 troops and 700 Marines to guard federal buildings and, later, to protest federal agents as they carried out immigration arrests.

The number of troops slowly dwindled until just several hundred were left. They were removed from the streets by Dec. 15 after a lower court ruling that also ordered control to be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom. But an appeals court had paused the second part of the order, meaning control remained with Trump. In a Tuesday court filing, the Trump administration said it was no longer seeking a pause in that part of the order.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to return control of the National Guard to Newsom.

“About time (Trump) admitted defeat,” Newsom said in a social media post. “We’ve said it from day one: the federal takeover of California’s National Guard is illegal.”

Troops will remain on the ground in several other cities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December paused a lower court ruling that had called for an end to the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., where they’ve been deployed since August after Trump declared a “crime emergency.”

Trump also ordered the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September as part of a larger federal task force to combat crime, a move supported by the state’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee and senators. A Tennessee judge blocked the use of the Guard, siding with Democratic state and local officials who sued. However, the judge stayed the decision to block the Guard as the state appeals, allowing the deployment to continue.

In New Orleans, about 350 National Guard troops deployed by Trump arrived in the city's historic French Quarter on Tuesday and are set to stay through Mardi Gras to help with safety. The state's Republican governor and the city's Democratic mayor support the deployment.

Ding reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press reporters John O'Connor in Springfield, Illinois, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, Jack Brook in New Orleans and Adrian Sanz in Memphis contributed.

FILE - A protester confronts a line of U.S. National Guard members in the Metropolitan Detention Center of downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)

FILE - Protesters stand off against California National Guard soldiers at the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, during a "No Kings" protest, June 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)