Falcon 9 and Dragon at Cape Canaveral pad for NASA's Crew-13: meet the four crew members launching Oct. 1

Crew-13 at a glance

At the pad

SpaceX posted at 4:36 p.m. CT Sunday, Sept. 27 (21:36 UTC): “Falcon 9 and Dragon are at pad 40 in Florida for @NASA’s Crew-13 mission to the @Space_Station.”

Launch target

No earlier than Thursday, Oct. 1, 10:10 a.m. CT (11:10 a.m. ET, 15:10 UTC), per NASA and SpaceX. Backup: Friday, Oct. 2, 9:47 a.m. CT (10:47 a.m. ET, 14:47 UTC), per SpaceX.

Launch site

Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

Rocket and spacecraft

SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon. SpaceX says this Dragon previously flew the Ax-4 mission to and from the space station.

Booster

Third flight, according to SpaceX; it previously launched Crew-12 and one Starlink mission. Planned landing: Landing Zone 40 (LZ-40), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Docking

For an Oct. 1 launch, less than nine hours later, about 8 p.m. ET (7 p.m. CT), at the forward port of the station’s Harmony module, NASA says.

Mission type

Long-duration crew rotation. NASA says it is SpaceX’s 13th crew rotation for NASA and its 14th flight carrying NASA astronauts to the station, counting the Demo-2 test flight. The crew joins Expedition 75.

Duration

About six months, according to the Canadian Space Agency. NASA lists the return as 2027.

Crew

Jessica Watkins (NASA), commander; Luke Delaney (NASA), pilot; Joshua Kutryk (Canadian Space Agency) and Sergey Teteryatnikov (Roscosmos), mission specialists

Webcast

SpaceX says its live webcast starts about one hour before liftoff on spacex.com and on X @SpaceX.

The latest

SpaceX posted Sunday afternoon that Falcon 9 and Dragon are at pad 40 in Florida for NASA's Crew-13 mission, and it added photos of the rocket and capsule at Space Launch Complex 40 to its mission page.

NASA, SpaceX and their international partners polled “go” to continue preparing for launch after a Flight Readiness Review at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Friday, Sept. 25, NASA said. The four crew members landed at Kennedy at 12:56 p.m. ET (11:56 a.m. CT) Saturday, Sept. 26, after flying in from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA says they will spend the days before launch in quarantine and final preflight work.

NASA first targeted no earlier than mid-September. On Aug. 29, NASA and SpaceX said they were moving the date to address an oxidizer leak on Dragon's propulsion system, found during standard prelaunch spacecraft processing. On Sept. 22, NASA set 11:10 a.m. ET Oct. 1 as the earliest launch opportunity. NASA had earlier moved Crew-13 up from November to increase how often U.S. crew rotation missions fly to the station.

Crew-13 will replace the station crew that is heading home, NASA says: NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Crew-12, who are due back on Earth in October after nearly eight months in space.

Meet the crew

• Jessica Watkins, commander (NASA) Background: a geologist. Watkins earned a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University and a doctorate in geology at UCLA, where she studied large landslides on Mars and Earth. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech on the science team for NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and interned at NASA's Ames Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 2019 she lived underwater in the Aquarius habitat as an aquanaut for NASA's NEEMO 23 mission. She also played rugby for the USA Eagles, a semifinalist at the 2009 Women's Sevens Rugby World Cup. NASA selected her in 2017. Spaceflight: one earlier flight, as a mission specialist on NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 (April 27 to Oct. 14, 2022), 170 days in space across Expeditions 67 and 68, orbiting Earth 2,720 times. It was the first flight of the Crew Dragon “Freedom.” Her NASA biography lists no spacewalks. NASA says she will be the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon twice. From: born in Gaithersburg, Maryland; she considers Lafayette, Colorado, her hometown. (NASA bio, NASA)
• Luke Delaney, pilot (NASA) Background: a retired U.S. Marine Corps major and test pilot. Delaney enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1998 as a KC-130 navigator, deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 and again in 2010 for Operation Enduring Freedom, and earned his naval aviator wings in 2008. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 2014, flew as a test pilot with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 20 and returned to the school as an instructor in 2018. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2020 and became a research pilot at NASA's Langley Research Center, flying airborne science missions. NASA says he flew more than 400 combat sorties and has more than 3,900 flight hours on 48 aircraft models. He holds degrees from the University of North Florida (mechanical engineering) and the Naval Postgraduate School (aerospace engineering). NASA selected him in 2021. Spaceflight: none before; Crew-13 is his first spaceflight. From: born in Miami; he considers DeBary, Florida, his hometown. (NASA bio, NASA)
• Joshua Kutryk, mission specialist (Canadian Space Agency) Background: a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, fighter pilot, test pilot and engineer. From 2007 to 2011 Kutryk flew CF-18 fighters with 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron in Bagotville, Quebec, in support of Canada's NATO, U.N. and NORAD commitments, and he deployed to the conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan. He then worked as an experimental and operational test pilot in Cold Lake, Alberta. The CSA selected him in 2017. In Houston he served as capcom for the ascent of the first crewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner, and in 2023 he was assigned to the Starliner-1 mission, which was later changed to an uncrewed cargo flight. He has more than 4,000 flight hours on more than 40 aircraft types, a mechanical engineering degree from the Royal Military College of Canada and three master's degrees. Spaceflight: none before; Crew-13 is his first spaceflight. The CSA says he will be the first CSA astronaut in NASA's Commercial Crew Program and will live and work on the station for about six months. From: born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada, and raised on a cattle farm in eastern Alberta. (CSA bio, NASA)
• Sergey Teteryatnikov, mission specialist (Roscosmos) Background: a naval engineer. Teteryatnikov graduated from the naval academy in St. Petersburg in 2011 as an engineer in ship power plant operations. From 2011 to 2021 he served in Russia's navy, first on surface ships and then in engineering posts aboard two nuclear-powered missile submarines, the Vladimir Monomakh and the Generalissimus Suvorov, according to his official biography from Roscosmos' Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. He was selected for the cosmonaut corps in 2021 and qualified as a test cosmonaut in 2023. Spaceflight: none before; Crew-13 is his first trip to the station. From: born in the village of Uspenovka in Russia's Stavropol region. (Roscosmos GCTC bio (Russian), NASA)

The science

NASA says the Crew-13 astronauts will support a series of health and human performance studies. A new study with ESA, Venous Haemostasis, looks at how weightlessness affects blood flow and clotting in astronauts' veins, using MRI scans, jugular vein ultrasounds, blood pressure checks and blood draws before, during and after flight.

Manual Piloting uses lunar-landing simulations to test how well astronauts handle difficult landings after long stretches in microgravity. The B-Complex study checks whether a daily B-vitamin supplement can reduce or prevent Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome, a condition that can change the structure of astronauts' eyes. Some crew members will also take part in Standard Measures, Spacecraft Occupant Risk, which measures the forces astronauts feel during landing, and Zero T2, which compares astronauts who use the station's treadmill with those who do not.

Our view Another step toward Mars: NASA says this research is meant to help keep astronauts healthy on Artemis missions to the Moon and on future expeditions to Mars, and every routine crew rotation on a reused rocket and capsule builds the kind of steady experience those longer trips will need.