Commander Jessica Watkins became the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit as her team reached the International Space Station after an eight-hour flight that set a US speed record.
The new arrivals floated into the space station through a pressurized vestibule and addressed colleagues on Earth late on Thursday, 1st of October.
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Mission to the International Space Station
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the crew’s Dragon spacecraft launched Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It flew on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station with Jessica Watkins alongside three other astronauts, NASA astronaut Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
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In a live broadcast on NASA TV, the capsule glided gently toward the stationary ISS while both moved through space at about 17,500 mph. “We are so excited to be here. This is truly a special place,” Watkins said on the NASA livestream. “It’s amazing and kind of ironic to think that it’s such a short trip to get here because the journey to get here has been long.”
The spacecraft will dock autonomously at the forward port of the station’s Harmony module around 7 p.m., making it the fastest launch-to-docking by a U.S. spacecraft in International Space Station history.
“Our steady cadence of commercial crew launches demonstrates the essential role the International Space Station plays in sustaining our presence in Earth’s orbit and sharpening the tools we’ll take forward to the Moon and Mars,” said Dr. Lori Glaze, associate administrator of NASA‘s Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.
“Each space station mission adds to our blueprint for exploration, and the work our crews carry out guides our plans while ensuring we keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in human spaceflight.”
Although their stay at the International Space Station will last six months, the flight was the quickest not only for Elon Musk’s company, but also for any American entity, including NASA. The SpaceX Crew-13 astronauts will conduct science experiments and maintain the station. NASA will oversee operations from Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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Meet Jessica Watkins and her Crew
Jessica Watkins earned a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles and started at NASA as an intern before being selected as an astronaut in 2017. In 2022, she boarded the SpaceX Dragon with Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Samantha Cristoforetti for a 15-hour journey to the International Space Station, becoming the first Black woman to take part in a long-duration mission and join the station crew.
She has now returned to the station for a second time as commander of NASA SpaceX Crew-13. Her teammates are Luke Delaney of NASA, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency, and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
Canadian astronaut Kutryk, whose wife is expecting a child while he is in orbit, said it “feels really good” to represent his country in space, adding he was “looking forward to a good mission after some sleep. That’s what I’m gonna go do next.” His wife Heather is expected to give birth to their third child in late November while he is circling Earth, which would make him the fourth man to become a father during a spaceflight.
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During the mission, Crew-13 will advance research aboard the orbiting laboratory by using microgravity to grow human stem cell-derived tissues for better personalized medicine, disease modeling and drug testing for conditions like heart disease and Parkinson’s. The crew will also explore crop production with a new, mostly autonomous plant growth system and test how plants grow outside dedicated facilities.
In addition, members will continue human health studies on blood flow changes in microgravity and test a new in-flight diagnostic device to monitor astronaut health. Crew-13 is part of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, which works with private companies to provide reliable access to space, support research and development aboard the station and enable future missions beyond low Earth orbit.
Main Image: NASA’s Crew-13, Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Image Credit: X/NASA
