Four astronauts are set to launch to the space station on October 1

NASA and SpaceX are targeting 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, October 1, for the launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The Crew-13 mission will carry NASA’s Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, the Canadian Space Agency’s Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. If the countdown holds, the crew is expected to dock at the station in less than nine hours, joining the crew members already living aboard Expedition 75.

A Four-Person Crew From Four Space Agencies

Watkins, a geologist making her second spaceflight, will command the mission. Delaney, a former naval aviator flying for the first time, serves as pilot. Kutryk, a fighter pilot also on his first flight, becomes the first Canadian astronaut to fly under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and Teteryatnikov, a former submariner, rounds out the crew as the second mission specialist on his own first trip to orbit.

All four were in quarantine at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, according to NASA’s September 22 update on the mission. They were due to fly to Kennedy Space Center on September 26.

Delayed Once Already by a Fuel Leak

October 1 is not Crew-13’s first target date. NASA and SpaceX had been aiming for a September 12 liftoff before standard prelaunch processing turned up an oxidizer leak in the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system, according to NASA’s August 29 announcement postponing the flight. “NASA and SpaceX are adjusting the launch date for the agency’s Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station to address an oxidizer leak on Dragon’s propulsion system,” the agencies said at the time, adding that a new target would follow once teams completed additional testing and data review.

That review stretched more than three weeks before NASA confirmed the October 1 date, a reminder of how a single leak detected on the ground can push a fully assembled crew mission back by weeks even when the crew itself is ready to fly. Oxidizer leaks are treated with particular caution in crewed spaceflight because the propellant is toxic and reactive, and engineers typically insist on isolating and understanding the exact source of a leak, rather than simply patching the symptom, before clearing a capsule to fly with people aboard.

Nine Hours to the Station’s Forward Port

The Dragon capsule assigned to the mission, flying atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 booster, is expected to dock automatically at the space station’s Harmony module forward-facing port at approximately 8 p.m., according to background on the mission that tracks Dragon’s flight history. Counting every crewed flight of a Dragon capsule since the Demo-2 test mission first carried NASA astronauts to orbit in 2020 — including private missions flown for companies other than NASA — Crew-13 will be the twenty-first crewed orbital flight of the Dragon spacecraft, and the thirteenth flown specifically as an operational NASA Commercial Crew Program rotation.

Once docked, Watkins, Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov will spend their first hours aboard going through standard safety briefings and equipment checks before formally joining Expedition 75’s existing crew. As with earlier rotation missions, the two crews are expected to overlap aboard the station for a handover period, during which departing crew members brief the new arrivals on ongoing experiments and station systems before returning to Earth in their own spacecraft.

NASA describes the broader purpose of missions like Crew-13 in terms of the Commercial Crew Program’s original goal: delivering “safe, reliable, and cost-effective human transportation to and from the International Space Station” by paying private companies such as SpaceX for seats rather than building and operating the spacecraft itself. Crew-13 is the program’s thirteenth operational flight since that model began carrying NASA astronauts.

A 180-Day Stay, With Return Set for Early 2027

NASA has planned Crew-13’s stay aboard the station at roughly 180 days, with the crew’s Dragon capsule expected to undock and return to Earth no earlier than March 2027, splashing down off the coast in the Pacific Ocean. During that stretch, according to NASA’s mission overview, the crew will support biomedical research and cargo operations aboard the station as part of the long-running partnership between NASA and private industry to keep a continuous U.S. presence in low Earth orbit.

NASA has scheduled additional coverage of the countdown, launch and docking through its event page for the mission, which the agency will update if the October 1 target shifts again before liftoff. Given that Crew-13 has already slipped once over a hardware issue discovered on the ground, NASA and SpaceX are treating the days remaining before liftoff as time to confirm the oxidizer fix holds under the same prelaunch conditions that first exposed it.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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