NASA's SpaceX Crew-13: The Crew, the Launch Profile, and the Mission Aboard the ISS
Read about the four Crew-13 astronauts, the Falcon 9 and Dragon Grace launch sequence, and what the mission is meant to accomplish during a six-month stay on the International Space Station.
NASA and SpaceX sent four astronauts to the International Space Station on Crew-13, a flight that also marked a return trip for one NASA astronaut. Spaceflight Now reported that the crew flew inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule named Grace, launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
A Commander With Dragon Experience
Jessica Watkins commands Crew-13. She previously served as a mission specialist on NASA's Crew-4 mission in 2022, which makes her the first NASA astronaut to fly twice on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. With her in the pilot's seat is Luke Delaney, a former test pilot who worked as a research pilot and aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia before joining the 2021 astronaut class.
Canada and Russia also have seats on the mission. Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency is the second Canadian to fly to space in 2026, following Jeremy Hansen's flight on the Artemis 2 crew. Sergey Teteryatnikov, selected by Roscosmos for cosmonaut training in 2021 and designated a test cosmonaut two years later, rounds out the four-person crew.
The Shortest Dragon Ride Yet
Crew-13 launched on a Falcon 9 whose first-stage booster, tail number B1101, was making its third trip. It had previously launched 29 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on the Starlink 6-88 mission and carried Dragon Freedom on NASA's SpaceX Crew-12. Less than eight minutes after liftoff, B1101 was set to land back at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 40. A successful landing there would have been the seventh for that pad and the 664th Falcon booster recovery overall.
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 55 percent chance of acceptable conditions at launch time. After reaching orbit, Grace was scheduled to dock with the station about eight hours later, a transit time that would be the shortest ever for a Dragon spacecraft.
Handover on the Station
Docking put the Crew-13 astronauts onboard the orbiting laboratory, where they joined the other members of Expedition 75. The plan called for a handover period lasting a few days, after which the four members of Crew-12 would climb back into Dragon Freedom and return to Earth.
The full Crew-13 mission is a six-month expedition. The available reporting does not list specific experiments assigned to the crew, but the longer-term job is to keep the station staffed and support the research and maintenance work that Expedition 75 is responsible for. The mission also demonstrates how routine crew rotation has become, using a reused booster and a rapid docking profile to replace one set of station residents with another.