A four-person crew launched into orbit Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, for a six-month expedition aboard the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft departed Space Launch Complex-40 at 11:10 am EDT, reaching orbit nine minutes later and docking with the ISS in eight hours—the fastest launch-to-docking by a U.S. spacecraft to the orbiting laboratory.
The launch had been delayed from mid-September to address a faulty valve in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system. Engineers cut into a propellant line to replace the component, illustrating the engineering demands of human spaceflight operations.
Jessica Watkins, a 38-year-old geologist and veteran astronaut, commands the mission, becoming the first Black woman to lead a spacecraft. Watkins previously spent 170 days in orbit during a 2022 spaceflight. Pilot Luke Delaney, a Marine Corps veteran, served as the Dragon spacecraft's pilot for the ascent. The international crew includes Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk, a former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, and Sergey Teteryatnikov, a Russian cosmonaut who joined the Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps in 2021.
SpaceX has now completed 21 human spaceflights overall, including test flights and fully commercial missions. Since May 2020, the company has transported 78 crewmembers from 20 countries across 20 Dragon missions, with seven of those being commercial or private astronaut flights.
NASA plans to keep the International Space Station operational through at least 2030. SpaceX's plan to retire Crew Dragon around that same year has prompted NASA to accelerate its partnership with Boeing, bringing the company's Starliner capsule into regular service. This dual-sourcing approach mitigates reliance on a single provider and fosters competition in human spaceflight—a costly insurance policy for access to orbit.
