SpaceX has begun its mission to bring back two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June.
The Dragon capsule, with two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, lifted off Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The pair’s mission to the space station was expected to last about eight days, but after a fault was discovered in the new Boeing Starliner, it returned to Earth empty as a precaution.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Korbunov are flying new supplies to Butch and Suni and expect to bring them home in February.
The Dragon launch was scheduled for Thursday, but was delayed by Hurricane Helen, which left a path of destruction through Florida, north through Georgia, and through Tennessee and the Carolinas.
SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, launches crews to the ISS every six months.
Dragon is expected to dock with the ISS at around 21:30 GMT on Sunday.
Under a contract between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft carry one NASA astronaut to the ISS on each flight and one astronaut flies on each four-seat Dragon.
