A four-person crew rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday and docked with the International Space Station about eight hours later — the fastest launch-to-docking transit to the ISS by a US spacecraft.
The mission, designated Crew-13, is commanded by NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, a 38-year-old geologist turned astronaut. With the flight she becomes the first Black woman to command a spacecraft. Watkins is the only veteran on the mission, having spent 170 days in orbit on a long-duration flight in 2022.
Seated beside her for ascent was pilot Luke Delaney, a Marine Corps veteran. The rest of the crew is international: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, a former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, a former naval engineer selected in 2021. "What an epic ride," Delaney radioed mission control after reaching orbit. "Today, we proudly continue the streak of humans living and working in orbit."
Getting off the ground at all required an unusual repair. In late August, NASA postponed the launch to resolve an oxidizer leak in Dragon's propulsion system detected during launch preparations. SpaceX traced it to a valve — and rather than drain the volatile, toxic nitrogen tetroxide already loaded into the spacecraft and take it apart, teams cut into the propellant line, removed the valve, welded a replacement in and sealed the line again.
It was the first time SpaceX had done such a repair on a fully assembled Dragon loaded with propellant, and it required special permission from the Space Force's Eastern Range to perform "hot work" with NTO on the vehicle. "There was not a lot of room, but there was good access up on the platform," said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, who inspected the work in the clean room. No leaks were detected in final preparations, and NASA's ISS programme manager Dana Weigel said the agency was "really happy with how that repair was done."
The flight was SpaceX's 13th crew rotation under its NASA contract and its 21st human spaceflight overall. NASA recently secured three more crew missions in a $946 million contract extension, bringing the total for 17 SpaceX crew flights to $5.92 billion — though SpaceX, now publicly traded, is winding Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 down around 2030 to focus on Starship and more lucrative lines such as Starlink. NASA is working more closely with Boeing to bring its troubled Starliner capsule into service as a second provider.
Why it matters: Watkins's command is a first that will be remembered well beyond the mission's six-month expedition, and the in-place valve weld is a case study in how much schedule and risk SpaceX is willing to absorb to keep the ISS crewed without interruption.
