Crew-13 astronauts set for launch to ISS after weeks of delays

5 min read · reported by NASASpaceflight

One veteran astronaut and three first-time flyers are ready to begin a six-month mission to the International Space Station as part of the NASA and SpaceX Crew-13 mission. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, will launch on Thursday, Oct. 1, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission is also set to mark the shortest time between launch and docking for any Crew Dragon vehicle.

Crew Dragon C213, named Grace , will fly on its second-ever mission and its first long-duration stay at the orbiting laboratory. It first flew in June 2025 as part of the Axiom-4 mission and spent just over 20 days in space.

With an on-time launch at 11:10 AM EDT (15:10 UTC) on Oct. 1, the crew will spend only about eight hours and 50 minutes free-flying before their capsule autonomously docks with the forward port of the Station’s Harmony module. The previous record was set by Crew-11, which made the journey in just under 15 hours.

Issues with the capsule pushed the launch from a Sept. 12 attempt to its current date. According to NASA, during standard prelaunch spacecraft processing, an oxidizer leak was found in Dragon’s propulsion system. The Crew Dragon vehicle is equipped with 16 Draco thrusters for on-orbit maneuvering. It utilizes hypergolic propellants, meaning they ignite upon contact with each other. SpaceX uses monomethyl hydrazine as fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as oxidizer.

The crew of four waited patiently in Houston while the problem was solved and arrived in Florida on Sept. 26 ahead of the launch. They also participated in a dry dress rehearsal on Sept. 29, which involved running through all the launch-day activities up to liftoff with no propellants loaded into the rocket.

Crew-13’s commander, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, is the only spaceflight veteran of this crew. She joined NASA as part of the 2017 astronaut class and first flew aboard Crew Dragon Freedom on its inaugural flight, Crew-4. This would also make her the first active NASA astronaut to fly twice on Crew Dragon and the fourth person ever to do so, joining Axiom astronauts Peggy Whitson and Michael López-Alegria, cosmonaut Andrew Fedyaev, and now-NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

She spent 170 days in space supporting Expeditions 67 and 68, conducting extensive science and research, which she is very familiar with. Prior to her selection as an astronaut, Watkins was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, following her studies at UCLA in planetary science and geology. She was a member of the science team for the Curiosity Mars rover. At NASA, she also became an aquanaut as part of the NEEMO underwater research program.

Crew-13’s pilot is the Florida-born and raised NASA astronaut Luke Delaney. Delaney was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2021 as part of the 23rd astronaut class.

Luke enlisted with the U.S. Marine Corps in 1998 as a naval aviator. He saw combat in December 2001 in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. After returning and primarily flying the KC-130, he eventually became a test pilot instructor on the T-6B, C-12C, U-6A, and NU-1B aircraft. In total, including time with NASA, Delaney has logged more than 3,700 hours of flight time in 48 different aircraft. After leaving the Marines in 2020, he joined NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia to assist with airborne science missions.

“A lot of what we’re doing on Earth to better understand space, we’re doing in space to better understand Earth,” Delaney said in an August 2026 interview with NSF .

Crew-13 mission specialist Joshua Kutryk, set to be the first Canadian astronaut to fly as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, is preparing for his first trip to space. He will be the second Canadian to fly on a Crew Dragon capsule following Mark Pathy’s flight as part of the first Axiom private mission. Kutryk was one of two people selected for the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) 2017 astronaut group, alongside Jenni Gibbons. The latter became part of the Artemis II backup crew and was a CAPCOM during the historic lunar flyby mission.

While this is his first flight into space, this is not the first flight he has been assigned to. In 2023, it was announced Kutryk would fly as part of the first operational crew flight of Boeing’s Starliner vehicle. However, following the Crew Flight Test with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — which would later be classified as a Type A mishap, the most severe at NASA — Starliner-1 was switched to a cargo resupply mission.

Of the four astronauts scheduled to fly on Starliner at the time of the mission’s reassignment, Mike Fincke and Kimia Yui would go on to fly aboard Crew-11, while its planned commander Scott Tingle now heads the astronaut office at NASA. This left Kutryk in limbo until April 2026, when he was selected for Crew-13.

Born in Alberta, he would go on to graduate from the Royal Military College of Canada before getting master’s degrees at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Air University in the US and again at the Royal Military College of Canada. He graduated from test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base and flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force flying the CF-188. He saw deployments to Afghanistan and Libya.

The second mission specialist, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatrikov, was selected by Roscosmos in Jan. 2021. He graduated from Russia’s Naval Engineering Institute before going on to work on submarines.

Crew-13 is set to launch from SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. SpaceX removed the crew access arm at historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) several months ago, meaning all future crew missions are expected to launch from SLC-40.

The booster that will carry them into space is B1101, flying on its third mission. It first flew a Starlink mission in January 2026, then launched Crew-12 in February. That crew is set to return back to Earth shortly after Crew-13’s arrival. The booster for this mission will likely fly again after this mission, as it is set to perform a return-to-launch-site (RTLS) landing at Landing Zone 40 (LZ-40), located directly adjacent to SLC-40.

This mission comes at an interesting time. SpaceX’s President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, when asked about Crew Dragon’s future, said it is not being retired today but indicated a slowdown in the program and noted Starliner’s lack of flights to the Station. So far in September, NASA has announced that Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 will all fly aboard a Crew Dragon in addition to the already assigned Crew-14.

At a NASA media briefing prior to the Crew-13 launch , officials said they plan to fly astronauts aboard Starliner by 2028 and acknowledged their interest in exercising their option for a fifth and sixth flight to the Station with the Boeing capsule.

Reported by NASASpaceflight. Reproduced unedited by Everything Space. View the original →