Houston, March 14 -- SpaceX and NASA have launched a mission to bring back US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station (ISS), where they have been stranded for nine months.

The lift-off took place at 7:03 ET on Friday, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission.

The mission also launched four crew members to the ISS: NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the International Space Station.

Crew-10 is the 10th crew rotation mission under SpaceX's human space transportation system and the 11th flight with a crew aboard to the ISS station through NASA's ...