New Delhi, March 15 -- After more than nine months on the International Space Station, two Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are a step closer to returning home.

On Friday, a Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon fixed to its top, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 pm (2303 GMT). It carried a team of four astronauts - NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov - headed for the space station. Key things to know:

Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stuck aboard the orbital lab since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth....