NASA set to launch Crew-13 mission to the ISS today
NASA and SpaceX are launching the Crew-13 mission on Thursday, October 1, sending three astronauts and one cosmonaut to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral. The flight is expected to be the fastest US spacecraft trip to the station in history.
NASA is scheduled to launch its Crew-13 mission on Thursday, sending a four-person crew to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX spacecraft. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida is set for 11:10AM ET on October 1, with livestream coverage beginning at 9:20AM ET across the NASA YouTube channel, Netflix, Discovery+, X, NASA+ and Amazon Prime Video.
The crew
The mission's commander is Jessica Watkins, a geologist who previously flew on Crew-4 and worked with the Curiosity rover science team. Luke Delaney, a research pilot at NASA's Langley Research Center, serves as pilot. Rounding out the crew are Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, both of whom are making their first trip to space or to the ISS.
Mission goals and context
Once aboard, the crew will carry out scientific investigations and technology demonstrations meant to help prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars. They will take over from the Crew-12 astronauts, who briefly had to shelter in their capsule in June after an air leak was detected on the station.
NASA says the mission's planned seven-hour, 50-minute journey from launch to docking would be the fastest such trip by a US spacecraft in the station's history. The launch comes as NASA continues working toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface, a goal now pushed back to 2028. The agency completed the Artemis II lunar flyby mission on April 10 and plans to test lunar landers built by Blue Origin and SpaceX during the Artemis III mission in 2027.
