Four people are suited up for a morning ride that still feels a little like science fiction — and a lot like a well-run commute to the coolest workplace off Earth. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 is targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 1, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. Falcon 9 is set to loft Dragon Grace toward the International Space Station for a roughly six-month expedition.
If weather scrubs Thursday, SpaceX and NASA list a Friday, Oct. 2 backup at 10:47 a.m. ET. No liftoff yet — we’re still watching the clocks.
Commander Jessica Watkins — already a Dragon veteran from Crew-4 — sits left seat with pilot Luke Delaney beside her. Mission specialists riding along: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. After the Launch Readiness Review, teams polled “go,” so the count stays live unless weather or a last-minute technical hold says otherwise.
If the clocks keep ticking, docking is planned about eight hours after liftoff — the shortest Dragon transit yet, per Spaceflight Now’s launch-day coverage. The crew could be floating into Expedition 75 territory before many of us finish dinner. On the weather front, the 45th Weather Squadron is watching clouds and rain — the usual Florida suspects — with Spaceflight Now citing roughly a 55% chance of acceptable conditions for the primary window.
This is Commercial Crew doing what it was built to do: keep a steady human presence on the Station while labs upstairs keep churning science that eventually shows up in hospitals, phones, and classrooms. Watkins returning as commander also quietly marks a milestone — the first NASA astronaut to fly twice on a SpaceX Dragon, per Spaceflight Now. And Delaney, a Central Florida kid who grew up watching shuttles, gets the pilot seat a lot of dreamers sketch in notebooks.
Why it matters
The Station isn’t a tourist postcard. It’s a shared lab where bone loss, plant growth, materials, and medical tech get stress-tested in microgravity — work that feeds Earthside medicine and the long game of going farther from home. Regular crew rotations keep that lab staffed without drama. When the ride gets routine enough to schedule like a train, the science gets to steer.
What’s next
Watch the clocks: liftoff NET 11:10 a.m. EDT Thursday, or 10:47 a.m. ET Friday if weather wins. Then a fast chase to docking if conditions cooperate. After a short handover, Crew-12 heads home on Dragon Freedom. Refresh this piece the moment we know scrub or success — and, ideally, after hatch open on station.
Sources: - https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2026/09/30/nasa-spacex-conclude-review-crew-13-go-for-launch/ - https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2026/10/01/launch-day-for-nasas-spacex-crew-13-mission/ - https://www.nasa.gov/mission/nasas-spacex-crew-13/ - https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/10/01/live-coverage-nasa-spacex-to-launch-next-crewed-mission-to-the-international-space-station/ - https://www.spacex.com/launches/crew13