PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. (TNND) — A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station Thursday, launching from Florida on a mission NASA says could make the fastest U.S. trip to the orbiting laboratory.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 lifted off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:10 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is commanding the flight, joined by NASA pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Watkins previously spent 170 days aboard the space station in 2022, while the other three crew members are making their first spaceflights.
The crew will fly in the Dragon spacecraft Grace, which previously supported the private Axiom Mission 4 flight in 2025. The mission is SpaceX’s 13th crew-rotation flight to the station for NASA.
If the launch proceeds as planned, Grace is expected to dock at the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at about 7 p.m. EDT — a trip of about 7 hours and 50 minutes that NASA says would be the fastest by a U.S. spacecraft in the station’s history.
The astronauts will join Expedition 75 for a long-duration science mission that includes research into heart disease and Parkinson’s disease, crop production, blood-flow changes in space and new equipment to monitor crew health. They will also conduct a brief handover with the Crew-12 astronauts, who are expected to begin their return to Earth no earlier than Monday.
