NASA’s Crew-13 launches toward the space station

NASA’s Crew-13 mission launched from Cape Canaveral on October 1, carrying four astronauts toward the International Space Station for a science expedition. NASA reported that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:10 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Dragon spacecraft carries NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The crew is expected to join Expedition 75 aboard the station after docking and a handover with the departing Crew-12 astronauts. NASA said docking at the station’s Harmony module was expected at about 7 p.m. EDT, following a flight of roughly seven hours and 50 minutes. The agency described the planned transit as the fastest launch-to-docking by a U.S. spacecraft to the station. That milestone remained conditional on docking: the launch-day account gave an expected time, not confirmation that the spacecraft had arrived. The mission had been targeted for September before being delayed. Reports attributed the delay to an oxidizer leak in Dragon’s propulsion system found during August environmental checks.