New material from NASA’s Commercial Crew and Space Station blogs clarifies developments around the recent SpaceX Crew-13 mission and the imminent departure of Crew-12. Together the posts add operational context to the record-setting Crew-13 transit and outline NASA and SpaceX planning for Crew-12’s splashdown off the California coast.
Crew-13 arrives, station population rises to 11
NASA’s Space Station blog reported that Dragon’s hatch opened at 9:19 p.m. EDT after docking, and that the four Crew-13 members — NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov — entered the International Space Station. The arrival followed a 7-hour, 55-minute Dragon spacecraft flight from Florida, described in NASA’s posts as a record-setting transit for a U.S. spacecraft to the station.
With the new arrivals, the orbital outpost’s Expedition 75 crew grew to 11 people. NASA noted that the station’s crew spent the day after arrival resting and that flight surgeons scheduled sleep-in time for the expanded crew.
Science and station upkeep continue
Separate NASA reporting on station activity ahead of the launch described routine research and maintenance tasks keeping Expedition 75 busy while the crew awaited Crew-13’s arrival. Those posts emphasize that science and lab upkeep continued to fill the schedule even as mission operations and crew rotations proceeded.
Crew-12 undocking targeted for Oct. 7
An update from NASA’s Commercial Crew blog set a new target for the undocking and return of the agency’s Crew-12 mission. Following a review of weather and splashdown conditions off the California coast, NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 1:05 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 7, for Crew-12’s undocking from the International Space Station.
The posts make clear that splashdown planning and weather remain drivers of the departure timeline, and that NASA and SpaceX jointly set the no-earlier-than target following those reviews.
Operational picture
Taken together, the posts provide a compact operational snapshot: Crew-13 launched from Cape Canaveral, completed a historically fast transit to the station, and joined Expedition 75 to raise the onboard population to 11. Meanwhile, mission planners are managing the outbound timing for Crew-12 around splashdown and weather constraints, with a no-earlier-than undocking time now set for 1:05 a.m. EDT Oct. 7.
NASA’s updates also underscore that routine station work—science and maintenance—continues through crew rotations, and that mission control centers at Johnson Space Center and SpaceX coordinate oversight for station operations and automated Dragon maneuvers, respectively, as described in NASA and related reporting on the mission timeline.
As the schedule evolves, NASA and SpaceX continue to publish status updates; the new posts add specific timing and crew-entering details that complement earlier coverage of Crew-13’s launch and fast rendezvous.
