Crew-13 Launch Targets September 12, Crew of Four Aboard
NASA unveiled the Crew-13 crew and launch date in Houston: liftoff as early as September 12 from Cape Canaveral. The Dragon capsule carries NASA and CSA astronauts and a Roscosmos cosmonaut.
NASA held two briefings at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday, August 3, about the Crew-13 mission, first a mission overview and then a crew announcement. Launch is set for as early as September 12, 2026, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Four people from three space agencies will fly to the International Space Station aboard a Dragon capsule for a long-duration science expedition.
The crew will ride to orbit on a Falcon 9 booster flying its third mission. Ahead of this flight, the booster is going through two weeks of maintenance. The Dragon capsule, named Grace, was recently mated to its trunk section, and a crew dress rehearsal in flight configuration is scheduled for Friday.
Who Is on the Crew-13 Crew
Mission commander is Jessica Watkins of NASA, a geologist by training who worked on the Curiosity rover team studying the surface of Mars. She becomes the first NASA astronaut to fly on Dragon twice. She first reached the station in 2022 on Crew-4 and spent 170 days in orbit on that mission. The pilot is Luke Delaney, a former US Navy pilot and research pilot at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
The mission specialists are Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Sergei Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos. Kutryk is a former fighter pilot and experimental test pilot from Alberta with master’s degrees in space studies, flight test, and defense studies, and he will be the first Canadian to fly under NASA’s commercial crew program. Teteryatnikov is a naval engineer specializing in ship propulsion systems and submersibles, and he has been a test cosmonaut since 2023.
For Delaney, Kutryk, and Teteryatnikov, this will be their first spaceflight. The three of them will become the 296th, 297th, and 298th people to visit the International Space Station.
What the Crew Will Do on the Station
Once aboard, Crew-13 joins Expedition 75 and takes over from the Crew-12 team. The published work plan includes:
- research into heart disease and Parkinson’s disease using tissue grown from human stem cells
- testing crop growth methods for long-duration flights
- testing new diagnostic medical equipment
Why Was the Launch Moved From November to September?
The flight was originally slated for November, then moved earlier to keep the spacing between crew rotations even, which lines up with a packed summer schedule aboard the station. NASA’s Chris Williams and Roscosmos’s Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev returned to Earth on July 26 aboard Soyuz MS-28, after 241 days in space. Soyuz MS-29 launched on July 14 and brought up Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina, and Anil Menon, who initially joined Expedition 74 and move into Expedition 75 as soon as Crew-13 arrives.
Ahead of the launch, the station has a run of spacewalks on the schedule. The first, the 96th in the station’s history, is set for Thursday, August 6, at 14:35 Central European Time. Jessica Meir, on her sixth spacewalk, and Anil Menon, on his first, will install a mounting bracket for a seventh iROSA solar panel. Two more spacewalks are planned for August 13 and 25.
The launch date is listed as the earliest possible, meaning it depends on the booster’s maintenance, capsule checkout, and weather over Florida. The announcement did not specify how many days the crew will spend in orbit. Nor is the science program a promise of results: the stem cell tissue experiments provide a model for comparison against controls on Earth, not a conclusion about treating heart disease or Parkinson’s disease.
