NASA Astronauts Launch to the Space Station on Dragon

Four astronauts launched from Florida on Thursday morning, beginning a roughly eight-hour trip to the International Space Station, where they will spend six months running science experiments in orbit.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission lifted off at 11:10 a.m. on October 1, 2026, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, according to NASA. The Falcon 9 rocket carried the Dragon capsule Grace skyward with NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov aboard.

The NASA astronauts launch is the 13th operational flight of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the 21st crewed orbital flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, making it part of the longest-running human spaceflight program the United States has had since the space shuttle era. At the moment of liftoff, the space station was orbiting at about 17,500 miles per hour, roughly 263 miles above Earth, northwest of Havana, Cuba.

Docking with the station is planned for around 7 p.m. Eastern on launch day, when the capsule is set to link up with the forward port of the Harmony module. The crew will then begin a long-duration science expedition as part of Expedition 75.

Meet the four fliers

Commander Jessica Watkins is the veteran of the group, making her second trip to space. Watkins first flew to the station in April 2022 on SpaceX Crew-4, becoming the first Black woman to serve on a long-duration mission there. Her return to orbit gives this mission a rare repeat commander leading three rookies.

Pilot Luke Delaney is flying for NASA for the first time, alongside mission specialists Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, reported by Spaceflight Now. The four trained together for more than a year before traveling to the Kennedy Space Center on September 26, 2026, in a pair of T-38 jets.

Watkins told reporters at the crew’s arrival that the group was excited and ready to join the Expedition 75 crew already living on the station, capping a year of training with teams around the world.

The flight also continues a quiet tradition of the station’s divided politics: even as relations between Washington and Moscow remain strained on Earth, a Russian cosmonaut is still flying on an American spacecraft alongside an American commander. The crew seat swaps between NASA and Roscosmos have held steady through years of tension.

What they will work on for six months

During their half-year stay, the crew will support hundreds of scientific investigations, including numerous projects sponsored by the ISS National Lab, the organization that manages research on the U.S. segment of the station.

The lab’s research highlights for this crew span biomanufacturing, regenerative medicine, physical sciences, technology development, and student-led experiments, the ISS National Lab said. That mix is deliberately tilted toward work that benefits life on Earth: experiments in orbit have already shaped advances in drug development, materials science, and even water purification.

NASA says the mission also prepares humans for future exploration beyond low Earth orbit, including planned journeys to the Moon and Mars. Long-duration stays remain the best way to learn how bodies and equipment hold up in weightlessness over months.

For readers keeping score on the hardware, the Falcon 9 booster was making its third flight. Its first stage separated after launch and headed for a touchdown at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 40 back at Cape Canaveral, while Dragon pressed on toward the station. The capsule is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean no earlier than March 2027, according to the mission overview.

Routine flights are the real milestone

There is a counterpoint worth naming: nothing about the NASA astronauts launch is experimental anymore. Crew-13 is a rotation flight, ferrying one crew up so another can come home, and the format is now close to an airline schedule. That is arguably the achievement.

When NASA’s first Commercial Crew flight carried astronauts in 2020, the program was still proving that a private company could fly people to orbit safely. Six years later, launches like Thursday’s are so routine that the bigger story is the pipeline behind them: scientists, students, and engineers whose experiments ride along because access to orbit is now steady.

The next chapter is commercial stations. NASA is preparing for the eventual retirement of the space station it shares with its partners, and the agency wants private companies to operate the orbital real estate that replaces it. Flights like Crew-13 keep the current station staffed while that handoff takes shape, and the research they carry is laying the technical groundwork for the economy that comes next.

For more on what scientists are learning off the planet, see Astronomers Catch Exoplanet Radio Signals for the First Time, and explore the full science desk.