NASA’s Crew-13 arrives at Kennedy ahead of planned space station launch

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 26, beginning their final days of preparation for a planned flight to the International Space Station. Their landing was aboard aircraft from Houston, with a Falcon 9 launch targeted for Oct. 1 after an earlier delay linked to an oxidizer leak in the crew’s Dragon spacecraft.

NASA identified the four crew members as its astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The agency said they touched down at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility at 12:56 p.m. EDT after departing Johnson Space Center in Houston and making a brief refueling stop in Mississippi. Their arrival placed the crew at the Florida launch site for quarantine and final preflight operations.

The crew reaches Florida

Spaceflight Now reported that Kutryk and Delaney piloted two T-38 jets on the trip from Houston. Watkins rode with Kutryk, while Teteryatnikov flew with Delaney. The outlet reported from the crew’s arrival at Kennedy, where the astronauts spoke to the press. NASA said an arrival media event featuring the crew and agency representatives was also being streamed on NASA Kennedy’s YouTube channel.

The flight ahead would be a first trip to space for Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov, according to Spaceflight Now. Watkins, the mission commander, would be making her second. The four represent NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and Roscosmos on a crew bound for the station. NASA describes Crew-13 as SpaceX’s 13th crew rotation mission for the agency and its 14th mission carrying NASA astronauts to the station when the Demo-2 test flight is included.

A delayed launch and the remaining checks

The mission had originally been scheduled to launch on Sept. 12, Spaceflight Now reported. An oxidizer leak in the Dragon spacecraft, named Grace, prompted NASA and SpaceX to delay it while repairs were made. Citing a Sept. 16 NASA update, the outlet reported that SpaceX replaced an oxidizer valve in Dragon’s propulsion system after the leak was detected during processing. Spaceflight Now said the NASA updates it cited provided no further details about the leak or repair.

Asked by Spaceflight Now about that work, Watkins thanked the ground and SpaceX teams for identifying the issue before flight and for determining what she called the safest path to fix it. Her response addressed the repair work without adding a technical account of the leak. The reported valve replacement explains the schedule change, but the available updates do not give a fuller public account of the fault.

NASA and SpaceX held a Flight Readiness Review at Kennedy on Sept. 25, according to Spaceflight Now. The review considered whether to proceed with the final stages of prelaunch preparation. The outlet reported that those plans included a Falcon 9 engine test scheduled for Sunday and a launch-day rehearsal with the crew planned for Tuesday. NASA separately said the astronauts would remain in quarantine and carry out final preflight operations at Kennedy in the days before launch.

NASA’s stated launch target was no earlier than 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 1, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. That timing was a target at the time of the arrival report. The reported engine test and rehearsal were also scheduled steps, so their outcomes and the eventual launch timing remained open in the cited accounts.

The arrival thus marked a concrete step in Crew-13’s preparations: the four people assigned to fly were at Kennedy, where the final work was to take place. The next developments for readers to watch were the planned test, the crew rehearsal and NASA’s launch updates following the earlier spacecraft repair. NASA said it would post further launch details on its mission blog.