NASA shares major update on the Crew-13 mission to the ISS—here’s when it will launch

NASA on Wednesday shared a much-awaited update on the SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). While initially planned for September 12, NASA and SpaceX are now targeting early October to launch the mission as engineers complete pre-launch activities and tests. The agency decided to postpone the launch in late August after teams found an oxidizer leak in the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system.

“NASA and SpaceX are now targeting as soon as early October for the launch of the Crew-13 mission to allow for completion of prelaunch activities, readiness reviews, and coordination of space station operations,” NASA said in a statement. “The team successfully replaced an oxidizer valve in Dragon’s propulsion system after a leak was detected earlier in processing.”

The Crew-13 mission includes four members, namely NASA’s Jessica Watkins (commander) and Luke Delaney (pilot), the Canadian Space Agency’s Joshua Kutryk (mission specialist), and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov (mission specialist). It will mark the second mission for Watkins. whereas the other three will fly on their debut space missions. Watkins will even become the first active NASA astronaut to ride the Dragon spacecraft twice, after flying on Crew-4, which launched on April 27, 2022.

As Crew-13 prepares for its journey, the four-member Crew-12 will be wrapping up its mission soon. The latter consists of NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot, and Russian space agency Roscosmos’s Andrey Fedyaev, who have been living and working aboard the orbital lab since February 14. According to NASA, the crew members are carrying on with microgravity research, cargo operations, and lab maintenance that will continue until their possible return before mid-October.

Meanwhile, a Roscosmos Progress 96 spacecraft is on its way to the station, carrying about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the residents of the ISS. It launched at 9:33 am EDT on Wednesday on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and is scheduled to autonomously dock with the Poisk module’s space-facing port at 9:46 am EDT on September 19. The Poisk module was vacated by the Progress 94 spacecraft, which launched with supplies in March and undocked from the orbital lab on September 7. The spacecraft departed the station with tons of trash loaded by the crew and conducted a planned destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

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