Hague and Gorbunov rode up to the station aboard Freedom in late September, on the launch of SpaceX's Crew-9 mission. Williams and Wilmore, on the other hand, reached the ISS on the first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule, which lifted off in early June.

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.