Four crew members reach orbit

A Falcon nine rocket carrying four crew members launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida at eleven ten am EDT Thursday, reaching orbit nine minutes later.

Launch delayed for valve repair

The launch was postponed from mid-September to replace a faulty valve in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system, requiring teams to cut into a propellant line inside the ship.

Jessica Watkins commands the mission

Jessica Watkins, a thirty-eight-year-old geologist turned astronaut, leads Crew-thirteen as the first Black woman to command a spacecraft. She spent one hundred seventy days in orbit in two thousand twenty-two.

Three other crew members join mission

Pilot Luke Delaney, a Marine Corps veteran, sits next to Watkins. Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk, a former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, a naval engineer, complete the crew.

Kutryk expecting third child during mission

Joshua Kutryk and his wife Heather are expecting their third child later this year. Astronauts have previously been off the planet during their child's birth, including NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik in two thousand nine.

“Leaving these three (plus one on the way) is the hardest thing I've ever done. But that has always been the nature of exploration.”

Fastest launch-to-docking on record

Watkins and her crewmates were on course to reach the International Space Station about eight hours after launch, the fastest-ever launch-to-docking transit to the ISS by a US spacecraft.

Delaney celebrates reaching orbit

Pilot Luke Delaney radioed mission control after reaching orbit, saying the crew would continue the streak of humans living and working in orbit and build on legacies of space exploration.

“What an epic ride. What an epic ride it was.”

ISS staffed since two thousand

The International Space Station has been permanently staffed since two thousand, with crews flying on NASA's Space Shuttles, Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and SpaceX's Crew Dragon. NASA plans to keep it operating through at least two thousand thirty.

SpaceX's thirteenth crew rotation mission

Thursday's flight was SpaceX's thirteenth crew rotation mission under a multibillion-dollar NASA contract and the company's twenty-first human spaceflight overall. SpaceX restored the country's ability to launch astronauts after a nine-year gap following Space Shuttle retirement in two thousand eleven.

Nine more Crew Dragon flights remain

SpaceX has nine more Crew Dragon flights in its backlog, including three additional crew missions NASA recently secured in a nine hundred forty-six million dollar contract extension, bringing NASA's total SpaceX contract to five point nine two billion dollars.

SpaceX prioritizes other business lines

SpaceX, now publicly traded, is prioritizing its most lucrative lines of business including Starlink broadband, the Starship and Super Heavy rocket, and orbital data centers. Flights to the ISS are not among them.

Unprecedented valve replacement surgery

SpaceX cut into the propellant line, removed and replaced the faulty valve, then welded the line back together. This was the first time SpaceX performed such a repair with a fully assembled Dragon spacecraft loaded with propellant.

“By cutting it out, we physically went in and actually cut the valve out of the line. It was welded in place, and then we actually re-welded a new valve in place.”

NASA approves repair and launch

No leaks were detected during final preparations for launch Thursday, and Dragon's propulsion system functioned well after arriving in orbit. NASA program manager Dana Weigel said the repair looked great and the agency was happy with how it was done.

“We looked at the plans, all of the data coming out of that, the welds, the leak, everything looks great.”

Repair kept mission on schedule

SpaceX's decision to cut out the valve in place rather than take a longer stand-down kept Crew-thirteen on track to arrive at the space station in time to replace Crew-twelve, returning to Earth in mid-October after eight months in orbit.