'Epic ride': Skies open up to let SpaceX, NASA send Crew-13 to space

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Oct 1, 2026

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Florida weather was dicey all morning, but cleared enough to let SpaceX and NASA launch the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station.

A Falcon 9 topped with the Crew Dragon Grace took its four occupants for a trip to the orbiting station launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 11:10 a.m.

“What an epic ride,” said NASA astronaut and Central Floridian Luke Delaney after making it to orbit. “What an epic ride it was. Today we proudly continue the streak of humans living and working in orbit.”

Joining Delaney were fellow NASA astronaut and commander Jessica Watkins, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.

“They say that courage is grace under pressure and the incredibly team that got us to orbit today truly embodied that,” Watkins said.

Kutryk told his family he missed them, but said it was “time for Crew-13 to go to work.”

For Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov, this marks their first spaceflight.

About how he felt when told he was finally in space, Kutryk said, “I don’t really believe it yet. It does feel weird.”

Watkins makes her return to space after flying on 2022’s Crew-4 mission, becoming the first NASA astronaut to make a second trip in a Crew Dragon.

They are in store for a quick rendezvous with the space station docking at 7 p.m. EDT, only seven hours, 50 minutes after launch.

This marked the 57th launch from the Space Coast in 2026, and the third human spaceflight from Florida following February’s Crew-12 and April’s Artemis II mission to the moon.

The crew got ready at the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center. They arrived to KSC last Saturday and ran through a test run this week.

The quartet then made their walkout and hopped into their Teslas for the ride to the pad three hours before liftoff.

On his walk across the crew access tower, Delaney, who was raised in DeBary and attended both DeLand and Deltona High School, was all smiles and gave a raised fist before venturing into the spacecraft. The 47-year-old was chosen as a member of the 2021 class of astronauts.

“I’m so happy to see Luke flying today,” said NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, who flew on Crew-11 and was part of the broadcast team. “Luke was in the class selected after my own class. I’ve gotten a chance to train with him and work with him and he’s just incredibly kind as well as he is technically competent. Just an awesome teammate … Great person to have by your side as a pilot.

The specialty license plate on their Teslas read “Lucky 13.”

Watkins addressed the superstition around the number of their mission, and noted Crew-13’s patch actually embraces it, paying deference to Apollo 13.

“We really wanted to honor their legacy, honor their resilience and their grit, and bring a little bit of that with us on our crew,” she said. “We stand on the shoulders of giants, and we wouldn’t be here without the incredible history of folks who have come through this place to launch into space and push the bounds of what humans are capable of.”

Their arrival means that Crew-12 can get ready to depart after having been on board the station for 7 1/2 months.

Crew-13’s stay on board is slated to be about six months as NASA tries to keep up a steady cadence of crewed missions to the station before the end of its planned lifespan after 2030.

SpaceX was recently awarded task orders for missions through Crew-17, but NASA also said it was reinvesting its efforts to get fellow commercial crew provider Boeing’s Starliner to a usable state.

A uncrewed version of Starliner is slated to fly and dock with the space station as early as December as Boeing and NASA work to fix major issues seen during its lone crewed flight in 2024. A first rotational crewed mission for Starliner would not come until 2028, but NASA has options to order up to five crewed missions if needed.

The launch is one of two SpaceX plans on Thursday from Florida.

Its powerhouse Falcon Heavy is slated to launch at 11:53 p.m. from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A on the NROL-97 mission with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Of note, both the Crew-13 booster, and the two side boosters for Falcon Heavy would attempt landings back on the Space Coast meaning Central Florida counties could be in store for up to three sonic booms today.

The Crew-13 booster made its landing adjacent the launch site at Landing Zone 40 while the NROL-97 boosters will land farther south at Canaveral’s Landing Zones 1 and 2.

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