NASA and SpaceX are preparing for the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station, with four astronauts scheduled to lift off aboard a Dragon spacecraft from Florida on October 1, 2026, following a short delay caused by a valve repair.
Launch Preparations and Weather Forecast at Cape Canaveral
SpaceX and NASA scheduled the lift-off of the Crew-13 mission for 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The flight will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, utilizing a Falcon 9 rocket that will take a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
Meteorologists with the 45th Weather Squadron forecasted a 55 percent chance of acceptable weather for the primary launch window. Launch weather officers cited potential interference from clouds and rain around the pad as a primary forecast challenge.
“Over the next 24 hours, a weak low-level disturbance sliding along the south side of the high into the Gulf will bring breezy onshore flow that will continue into the primary launch window late Thursday morning,” launch weather officers wrote on Wednesday. “Models still suggest the continued threat for onshore moving Atlantic showers along the coast, with the exact timing and locations of this activity the main forecast challenge.”
launch weather officers, via Spaceflightnow
SpaceX assigned the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1101 to the flight. This booster previously flew on two missions: carrying 29 Starlink V2 Mini satellites and launching Dragon Freedom on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12. Less than eight minutes after liftoff, the booster is scheduled to target a touchdown at Landing Zone 40.
Overcoming Pre-Flight Hardware Delays
The mission was originally slated to launch on September 12, 2026, but an oxidizer leak discovered in the Dragon spacecraft, named Grace, forced a delay. NASA announced the postponement in an August 29 Commercial Crew Program blog post, noting that engineers needed time to inspect the propulsion system.
Weeks later, NASA confirmed that SpaceX successfully replaced an oxidizer valve within the vehicle’s propulsion system. Following the repair work and a Flight Readiness Review at Kennedy Space Center, the teams cleared the spacecraft for final pre-launch testing, including a static fire engine test and a crew launch day rehearsal.
“We are, first of all, so grateful to the teams on the ground, the SpaceX team here at the Cape, who were able to identify the issue with the vehicle on the ground with time to address it.”
Jessica Watkins, NASA astronaut and Crew-13 commander, via Spaceflight Now
Meet the Crew-13 International Flight Roster
The four-member crew arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, September 26, 2026, flying in on T-38 jets from the Johnson Space Center. Commander Jessica Watkins leads the mission, making history as the first NASA astronaut to fly twice aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Watkins previously served as a mission specialist on the Crew-4 mission in 2022.
“Arriving here today for us as a crew represents both kind of the culmination and the beginning of a journey for us. We’ve been training together as a crew for over a year now, so it is the culmination of all of that work and effort, and we’re so grateful to the teams of experts around the world that have gotten us prepared and ready for this,” Watkins said.
Jessica Watkins, NASA astronaut and Crew-13 commander, via Spaceflight Now
The roster includes pilot Luke Delaney, a former test pilot, aerospace engineer, and Florida native whose childhood memories of watching space shuttle launches inspired his career. Mission specialists Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos complete the quartet.
A Fast Transit to the International Space Station
Once airborne, the Dragon spacecraft Grace is scheduled to dock with the orbital complex approximately eight hours after lift-off, marking the shortest transit time ever for a Dragon vehicle. The new arrivals will begin a six-month expedition on the station, replacing the homebound Expedition 75 crew.
The departing crew members—NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev—spent their final week packing cargo and running simulations for atmospheric reentry. The homeward-bound quartet is scheduled to return to Earth in October inside another SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after nearly eight months in orbit.
Historical Symbolism and the Apollo 13 Legacy
The Crew-13 designation carries an intentional nod to aerospace history. The mission patch features a tribute to Apollo 13, the 1970 lunar mission that survived an in-flight oxygen tank explosion 200,000 miles from Earth. Rather than avoiding the number 13 due to superstition, NASA embraced it to highlight the resilience of engineering and teamwork.
While NASA largely moved away from numerical mission sequencing during the Space Shuttle era in the 1980s, the Commercial Crew Program has maintained an unbroken numeric manifest since its inaugural test flight in 2020. Crew-13 now continues that operational sequence while tying modern commercial spaceflight back to the crisis-management lessons of the past.
