On Friday, SpaceX’s Crew-10 mission launched to help bring back the two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station. Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to just be at the ISS for eight days, but they’ve been stuck there since June 2024.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule, riding atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets, is carrying the four Crew-10 astronauts – NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – to orbit.
Crew-10 is go for launch! pic.twitter.com/xyQzIJ7Abf
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2025
They are going to replace SpaceX’s Crew-9, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksanr Gorbunov, who arrived in space in late September 2024. After the Crew-10 astronauts arrive at the ISS which is expected Saturday night at around 11:30 p.m. EDT, Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to depart on Wednesday as early as 4 a.m. EDT, along with Hague and Gorbunov.
The launch was pretty spectacular.
Liftoff of Crew-10! pic.twitter.com/OOLMFQgA52
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2025
You can see the first stage booster separating here.
Falcon 9 first stage separation and flip maneuver pic.twitter.com/VWcC2zjnDB
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2025
Then, that booster comes back to Earth and lands, so it can be used again, which is cool and economical.
Falcon 9’s first stage booster has landed at Landing Zone 1 pic.twitter.com/OptB0Fv1kD
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2025
Landing confirmed, marking the 400th time a Falcon 9 first stage booster has landed pic.twitter.com/eYMrA7Qrl2
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 15, 2025
Now, you would think that Musk would get a lot of support for helping to rescue the astronauts. He thinks that the rescue was delayed because of politics, that Joe Biden didn’t want him to rescue them.
Most of the media I’ve seen so far appears to be fairly neutral. But there was a truly ugly headline from Mediaite.
This is how Mediaite chose to frame the successful launch of SpaceX Crew-10 on its mission to rescue stranded NASA astronauts. pic.twitter.com/H21RwvQvPl
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 15, 2025
“SpaceX Rocket Makes It to Space Without Exploding,” it says.
READ MORE: SpaceX Did Amazing Things Again During 7th Starship Launch, but Then There Was a Big Problem
They just can’t help themselves. Are they so vile, that they put that out there like that? They can’t focus on the rescue or the great achievements that SpaceX has made.
They lumped the launches of Starship with the Falcon-9, But Falcon-9 ,the rocket used here in this launch, is considered safe and highly reliable.
It’s the more experimental non-manned Starship that has had prior issues. They had a problem in January, where the rocket blew up. But the “chopsticks” still caught the first stage that had separated, in an amazing move.
Does the media not care that there’s a difference? And in any event, they shouldn’t be making this disgusting take with a manned launch. Just an ugly, sick headline right in the middle of something very bold on behalf of the country.
