NASA KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – SHUTTLE LANDING FACILITY – NASA’S Crew-13 international quartet of astronaut and cosmonauts have arrived Saturday afternoon at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Florida’s Space Coast ahead of their launch planned for Oct 1 bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

Liftoff was delayed about 3 weeks from an initial target date of Sept. 12 after an oxidizer leak was found in their Crew Dragon spacecraft which caused a substantial delay and required significant time to fix and repair, as NASA announced on Aug. 26 – with few updates. Safety is always top priority

The crew of one veteran and three rookie spaceflyers arrived at the KSC SLF around 1 PM ET today, Saturday, Sept. 29 aboard two T-38 NASA jets, following a flight from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that included a brief refueling stopover in Mississippi.

Enjoy our photos of the Crew-13 arrival event taken by Ken Kremer for Space UpClose

They are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) at 11:10 a.m. ET (1510 UTC) Oct. 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon Grace spacecraft from Space Launch Complex-40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The multinational foursome of space flyers from the US, Canada & Russia comprises NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins (commander) and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov

Watkins is the first NASA astronaut to fly a second time on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

“Arriving here today for us as a crew represents both kind of the culmination and the beginning of a journey for us. We’ve been training together as a crew for over a year now, so it is the culmination of all of that work and effort, and we’re so grateful to the teams of experts around the world that have gotten us prepared and ready for this,” Watkins said to NASA officials and the media.

“But it is also the beginning. We are excited, we are ready to fly, we are ready to join the Expedition 75 crew on board the International Space Station.”

The crew arrival and media Q & A  event was streaming live on NASA Kennedy’s YouTube channel, featuring the crew, as well as representatives from NASA Kennedy, and the agency’s Low Earth Orbit Program.

My question during the Q&A was the second one – I was asking the crew about the science they will be conducting; at the 28 min mark in NASA video

Complete Crew-13 Arrival video with Media Q&A:

Link:

Crew-13 will carry out a vigorous and wide-ranging science expedition to the station lasting roughly around six months

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 crew members will spend the remaining days before launch to the International Space Station in quarantine and conducting final preflight operations at Kennedy.

“The crew will go to the Astronaut Crew Quarters inside Kennedy’s Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, where they will continue to quarantine and complete prelaunch preparations,” said NASA.

Crew-13 will replace the departing Crew-12 after a brief handover lasting a few days.

Crew-13 is SpaceX’s 13th crew rotation mission for NASA and the company’s 14th carrying NASA astronauts to the space station, including the Demo-2 test flight in 2020

The Falcon 9 first stage booster will land back at pad 40 at LZ-40 some eight minutes after liftoff.

Here’s some details about the science from NASA

“During NASA’s SpaceX Crew‑13 mission aboard the International Space Station, astronauts will support a series of biomedical and human performance investigations, including a new collaborative effort to study how spaceflight affects blood flow and clotting. NASA also is testing crew members’ manual piloting skills, evaluating methods to counter vision and brain changes, gathering essential health data to inform future missions, and measuring forces astronauts experience during return‑to‑Earth to help refine re-entry hardware and procedures.

Among upcoming research, a new collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), called Venous Haemostasis, builds on previous studies of blood flow in space by combining the two space agencies’ research efforts. By coordinating blood collections and other physiological data, researchers can reduce how often astronauts need blood drawn while combining analytical measurements to better understand how microgravity affects blood clotting and circulation.”

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Recent Ken Kremer TV interviews about Crew-13 mission:

On Sep. 23, I was interviewed live on FOX 35 Orlando for an update about preparations to launch the NASA SpaceX Crew-13 astronaut mission with four crew members to the ISS

Watch my complete live interview on Fox 35 here:

https://www.fox35orlando.com/video/fmc-njofqzznfz2s2upn

https://youtu.be/skkBTiGR3VM?si=yQQEAmlLadejkxe1

Caption: NASA and SpaceX are targeting 11:10 am on Thursday, October 1st as the earliest launch opportunity for the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station. Meanwhile, the ISS National Laboratory released some its findings for a case study that validates a new way of capturing space debris. Ken Kremer, Managing Editor of Space UpClose, joined FOX 35’s Garrett Wymer live over Zoom to discuss the latest on Sept. 23, 2026.

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