MICHGAN  -  After their weeklong journey turned into a monthslong stay on the International Space Station, two Boeing Starliner astronauts will soon be united with the spacecraft that will eventually bring them home. The SpaceX Crew Dragon cap­sule, chosen by NASA to carry astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth after their Starliner spacecraft was deemed too risky for crew, is approaching the space sta­tion. The vehicle, on a mission called Crew-9, is expected to dock at about 5:30 p.m. on Sun­day. On board the SpaceX ve­hicle are NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Along­side them are two empty seats, saved for Williams and Wilm­ore to occupy when the group returns to Earth next year. Hague and Gorbunov launched aboard the Crew Dragon Satur­day afternoon from Cape Ca­naveral Space Force Station in Florida. Though they reached their intended orbit without a hitch, SpaceX later revealed that the second stage, or upper portion, of the Falcon 9 rocket that powered the first part of their journey experienced an issue after it broke away from the capsule. “After today’s suc­cessful launch of Crew-9, Fal­con 9’s second stage was dis­posed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn,” the company shared in a post on X, the so­cial media platform formerly known as Twitter. “As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.” SpaceX indicat­ed it would pause flights using Falcon 9 — the world’s most frequently launched rocket — as it explored the anomaly. “We will resume launching after we better understand root cause,” the company said in the X post.

CNN has reached out to the Federal Aviation Administra­tion for comment. Meanwhile, Crew-9’s SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has spent about one day traveling through orbit as it prepares to dock with the International Space Station. Once safely attached to one of the station’s docking ports, the spacecraft will open its hatch, allowing Hague and Gorbunov to join the other astronauts already on board the orbiting laboratory. Together, Hague, Williams, Wilmore and Gor­bunov will complete SpaceX’s Crew-9 team. The group will spend about five months on board the space station before returning home no earlier than February. Williams and Wilm­ore first traveled to the Inter­national Space Station in early June aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft for what was ex­pected to be a weeklong test mission. But issues with he­lium leaks and malfunctioning thrusters left engineers scram­bling to figure out what went wrong — and NASA ultimately decided the Starliner’s prob­lems were not well enough un­derstood for the space agency to allow Williams and Wilmore back on board.