SpaceX's Crew-13 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on October 1, carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station in a record-setting flight: about eight hours from launch to docking, the fastest ever for a U.S. spacecraft. Space.com later featured an infrared view of the launch as its space photo of the day for October 5.
At 11:10 a.m. ET on October 1, a Falcon 9 rocket roared off Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, lofting the Crew Dragon spacecraft "Grace" toward the station. The mission had been delayed three weeks to fix a leaking fuel system in the Dragon capsule, and thick clouds threatened the countdown all morning before skies cleared in time. Aboard were NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins (commander) and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
The Dragon docked with the station's Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. EDT — about 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff — with the hatch opening at 9:19 p.m. "This marked the fastest launch-to-docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station," NASA said. It was the first crewed launch from U.S. soil since the Artemis II moon mission in April, and the first time in three months that Americans reached space.
This was the 13th operational crew SpaceX has launched for NASA, not counting the 2020 test flight, and the crew embraced the number: the mission patch pays homage to Apollo 13, whose crew returned safely from the harrowing 1970 moonshot. On launch day the four rode to the pad in black Teslas bearing "Lucky 13" plates and carried a small crocheted golden dragon named Lucky wearing a four-leaf clover. "We are four of the luckiest humans on or off planet Earth," Watkins joked from orbit.
Watkins, a geologist who worked with NASA's Curiosity Mars rover a decade ago, previously spent months aboard the station in 2022 with Crew-4; this flight makes her the first Black woman to command a crew to orbit, and the first NASA astronaut to fly twice aboard a Crew Dragon. Her three crewmates are all spaceflight rookies: Delaney, a retired Marine; Kutryk, a Royal Canadian Air Force colonel whose wife will give birth while he is away; and Teteryatnikov, a former submariner.
Space.com selected an infrared image of the launch as its photo of the day for October 5. In infrared, the rocket's exhaust plume and its heat signature render in layers invisible to ordinary cameras, giving the familiar sight of a liftoff a strikingly different look — and putting the four-day-old launch back in the spotlight.
The quartet will spend about six months aboard the station, conducting science and technology experiments to benefit life on Earth and in space, and will take over station duties from the Crew-12 astronauts who have been aboard since February. The handover briefly brings the station's population to 11 before it settles back to seven. "Crew-13 is another demonstration of America's unmatched capability in human spaceflight and the strength of our commercial partnerships," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said.