Space & Tech
Crew-13 reaches space station after record-fast trip from Cape Canaveral
NASA confirms a 7:05 p.m. docking and 9:19 p.m. hatch opening on October 1. The four arrivals join Expedition 75 for a handover and science mission.
Four astronauts who left Cape Canaveral on Thursday morning reached the International Space Station that evening, completing a 7-hour, 55-minute trip that NASA says was the fastest launch-to-docking by a U.S. spacecraft in the station’s history.
Crew-13’s SpaceX Dragon docked at the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. EDT on October 1. The hatch opened at 9:19 p.m., and NASA later confirmed that Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk and Sergey Teteryatnikov had entered the orbiting laboratory.
The flight began at 11:10 a.m. EDT aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. For residents who watched the morning liftoff, the evening docking completed the journey from the Space Coast to the crew’s new workplace in orbit.
Docking and entering the station were separate milestones. NASA’s docking update described leak checks and pressurization before the hatch could open. Its later report confirmed the actual opening time, replacing the earlier estimate of about 8:45 p.m. The confirmed timeline is 11:10 a.m. launch, 7:05 p.m. docking and 9:19 p.m. hatch opening, all on October 1 in Eastern Daylight Time.
Watkins and Delaney represent NASA, Kutryk the Canadian Space Agency, and Teteryatnikov Roscosmos. They joined the seven Expedition 75 crew members already aboard, temporarily bringing the station’s crew to 11. NASA’s mission plan calls for a brief handover before the four members of Crew-12 return to Earth.
The new crew’s work will include research on human stem cell-derived tissues, plant-growing systems and astronaut health. NASA says the mission will examine blood-flow changes in microgravity and test an inflight diagnostic device. These are planned investigations, rather than findings already produced by the arriving crew.
The completed arrival follows the prelaunch preparations covered in 321 Daily’s earlier Crew-13 stories. For subsequent station operations and Crew-12’s return, NASA’s International Space Station blog provides the mission’s official updates; the launch and docking times above are completed events, not upcoming viewing windows.