Crew-13 Lands in Florida, Launch Set for October 1
Watkins, Delaney, Kutryk, and Teteryatnikov landed at Kennedy Space Center. Launch to the International Space Station is scheduled for October 1 at 11:10 a.m. Eastern, 5:10 p.m. in Belgrade.
Crew-13 arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, September 26, after NASA, SpaceX, and international partners gave the final green light a day earlier to continue launch preparations. The crew includes NASA commander Jessica Watkins and pilot Luke Delaney, along with mission specialists Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergei Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos. Liftoff toward the International Space Station is targeted for no earlier than Thursday, October 1, at 11:10 a.m. Eastern time (5:10 p.m. in Belgrade).
The go ahead came out of a flight readiness review held Friday, September 25, at Kennedy Space Center, a detailed check of SpaceX’s transportation system, mission operations, and the station’s readiness to receive a new crew. A day later, at 12:56 p.m. Eastern (6:56 p.m. in Belgrade), the astronauts touched down on the runway at Kennedy after flying in from Johnson Space Center in Houston, with a refueling stop in Mississippi along the way. They now enter quarantine for final preparations before the flight.
If the launch goes ahead as planned, the Dragon capsule will lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, docking at the forward port of the station’s Harmony module later that same evening, around 8 p.m. Eastern (roughly 2 a.m. in Belgrade on October 2). For NASA and SpaceX, this will be the 13th crew rotation to the station and the 14th crewed flight to the outpost overall, counting the Demo-2 test flight.
Why the Launch Was Delayed
The mission was originally set to launch on September 12. NASA announced the delay on August 29 after a standard pre-launch check turned up an oxidizer leak in the Dragon capsule’s propulsion system. Engineers replaced the faulty valve, NASA confirmed the fix on September 16, and the new October 1 target date was made official on September 22. Friday’s readiness review was the last formal hurdle before that date.
Crew-13 is coming up to relieve the Crew-12 team, which has been aboard the station since February 13: commander Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (ESA), and Andrei Fedyaev of Roscosmos. After nearly eight months in orbit, those four astronauts will board their own Dragon capsule once the handover with the new crew is complete and return to Earth, splashing down off the coast of California. NASA has not yet announced an exact date for undocking or splashdown, since both depend on when Crew-13 reaches the station and how long the handover takes. Crew rotations on the International Space Station typically last around 180 days, or about six months, though NASA has not yet released a planned return date for this particular mission.
Neither the launch date nor Crew-12’s return date is final. Weather over Florida and the Atlantic could push the liftoff back, while wave conditions and visibility off the California coast could delay the outgoing crew’s return. NASA says it will confirm the final timing through its own channels on the day of the flight itself, meaning October 1 remains a target for now, not a guarantee.
