NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 joins Expedition 74 aboard ISS after successful docking

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission achieved a flawless docking with the International Space Station at 3:15 pm EST on Saturday, February 14, 2026, marking the successful arrival of four astronauts to join Expedition 74. Hatches between the Dragon spacecraft and the station’s Harmony module opened at 5:14 pm EST, allowing NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev to enter the orbiting lab. Sophie Adenot was the first to enter the ISS through the hatch, while Jessica Meir, who had earlier shared her excitement about the flight, was the last one in. This restores the station to a full complement of seven residents, including NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.

Jessica Meir, serving as Crew-12 commander and on her second mission to the ISS, expressed her happiness upon entry into the orbiting lab, “It is so wonderful to be back up here for Andrey and me, but really we’re so excited for Jack and for Sophie for their first trip here to the International Space Station.” Meir also touched on the mission’s, and broadly, NASA’s emphasis on international collaboration during the crew’s planned eight-month stay, focused on microgravity research. She said, “I think you look around the crew up here, and it’s really a testament to everything that we do. We have so many countries represented, so many backgrounds, so many disciplines, and we are so excited to be here and to get to work with Expedition 74.” 

The crew made themselves comfortable aboard the Dragon capsule named Freedom by taking off their suits during the coasting phase of the orbit. The Dragon’s rendezvous with ISS followed a precise 34-hour journey after liftoff, which featured a series of key burns. These included a phase burn at 6:02 am EST, a boost burn at 7:13 am EST, a close burn at 8:59 am EST, a transfer burn at 9:41 am EST, a final coelliptic burn at 10:27 am EST, an out-of-plane burn at 12:59 pm EST, and an approach initiation burn at 1:39 pm EST.

Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich praised the vehicle’s performance post-launch: “We really didn’t have too many things to work on during the countdown; it was really quiet with Falcon 9 and Dragon. Nothing really off-nominal… We checked out the service section Draco, the forward bulkhead of Draco is firing just fine. All the systems on Dragon are working well.” Stich also provided an update on the crew’s status, “The crew’s doing well in orbit. Jessica, Jack, Sophie, and Andrey are settling into their kind of off-duty period.” 

This launch on Friday the 13th, the first for NASA as noted by Stich, came after favorable weather finally prevailed, as Stich remarked, “I’m proud to say we didn’t talk about weather much at all after talking about weather for a whole week. We were blessed with really good launch site weather this morning… and we finally found the right day to launch on Friday the 13th.” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman celebrated the timing of the mission as the Artemis II mission preparations take place simultaneously, also noting Falcon 9’s performance post-clearance from a recent grounding, “What an absolutely wonderful start to the day. We saw a remarkable Crew-12 launch, a very impressive F9 return to launch site… all while Artemis 2 sits on the pad in preparation for its historic mission.”

Crew-12 pulled forward after Crew-11’s early return due to a medical emergency. The team will conduct experiments on blood flow in spaceflight, IV fluid generation, plant health monitoring, nitrogen-fixing microbes for food production, and pneumonia bacteria treatments to support NASA’s deep space goals, tying directly to Artemis efforts for a lunar return and, possibly, missions to Mars further down the line. Amid Artemis II preparations, Isaacman also noted an interesting event that will soon follow the lunar flyby mission’s launch: “We will have the first spaceship-to-space station call between the International Space Station and a lunar mission with Artemis II...It's pretty exciting to think about.”

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