NASA’s Crew-13 mission launched from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station on a record-breaking eight-hour express flight. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft achieved the fastest U.S. trip to the orbiting laboratory in history.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:10 a.m. EDT Thursday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Topped with the Crew Dragon capsule named Grace, the vehicle successfully propelled four crew members into orbit despite morning weather concerns over cumulus clouds.
The mission marks the 13th operational crew flight that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX vehicle. Making up the four-person flight are Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins.
SpaceX Capsule Grace Sets a U.S. Flight Speed Record to the Space Station
Less than eight hours after clearing the launch pad in Florida, the Space docked at 7:05 p.m. EDT. The capsule docked autonomously to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module exactly 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff.
That transit time makes it the fastest launch-to-docking by any U.S. spacecraft in the history of the orbital outpost. The previous record for an astronaut crew was 14 hours and 43 minutes, set by the Crew-11 mission in August 2025, while a robotic cargo resupply flight held the overall U.S. vehicle record at 12 hours and 33 minutes.
“We got lucky this time, the space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the shortest launch-to-docking time we’ve had to date.”
Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX
While the flight set a domestic benchmark, it did not break the absolute global record. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft reached the space station in just 3 hours and 3 minutes in May 2020 by utilizing an aggressive two-orbit fast-track trajectory governed by Russian mission controllers.
Commander Jessica Watkins Leads a Diverse Expedition 75 Crew
Geologist Jessica Watkins commands the mission, making her second flight to the orbiting laboratory following her service on the Crew-4 mission in 2022. Watkins is the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit and now becomes the first NASA astronaut to fly twice aboard a Crew Dragon.
Seated beside her as pilot is Luke Delaney, a former naval aviator from nearby DeBary, Florida, who watched space shuttle launches growing up. His alma mater, Deltona High School, declared Thursday Luke Delaney Day
as students gathered outside to watch him take flight.
Mission specialists Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos round out the four-person team. Kutryk faces a unique milestone during his six-month stay: his wife, Heather, is due to give birth to their third child in late November, making him the fourth man to become a father while orbiting Earth.
Biomedical Research and Human Health Experiments Aboard Expedition 75
After opening the hatch to the Harmony module, the newly arrived quartet joined the seven occupants already living aboard the complex.
The crew will spend approximately six months conducting science investigations. Dana Weigel, manager of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, stated that the crew will help researchers treat heart disease and Parkinson’s disease by studying human stem-cell-derived tissues to improve medicine and pharmaceutical testing.
Other investigations include the Venous Haemostasis experiment, a partnership with the European Space Agency examining how microgravity affects blood clotting in space.
Crew-12 Handover and Return Timeline to Earth
The arrival of Crew-13 initiates a brief handover period with the departing members of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission, who arrived at the station in February. Crew-12 astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot, and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will return to Earth in their Dragon capsule as soon as Monday, splashing down off the coast of Southern California.
The launch itself followed a nearly three-week delay after engineers discovered a propulsion system leak in the Dragon capsule Grace during pre-mission checkouts. Lori Glaze, NASA’s head of human spaceflight, credited the launch to hours of determined troubleshooting that cleared the vehicle for flight.