Overview
- NASA confirmed Monday that Crew‑13 — commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, mission specialists Joshua Kutryk and Sergey Teteryatnikov — is slated to launch to the ISS as soon as Sept. 12, 2026 for a roughly six‑month expedition.
- The crew will perform station maintenance and external work plus biomedical and life‑science research, including studies of stem cell‑derived tissues for heart disease and Parkinson’s, tests of blood‑flow diagnostics, and crop‑production trials for long missions.
- Kutryk’s assignment follows an April reassignment from Boeing’s Starliner to SpaceX’s Dragon after reliability problems with early Starliner crewed flights delayed schedules.
- NASA moved the mission up from an original November slot to September to speed launch cadence, and confirmed SpaceX will use Tesla Cybertrucks on the launch pad to evacuate crew in an emergency to reduce resource conflicts with government vehicles.
- Kutryk, a former RCAF test pilot selected by the Canadian Space Agency in 2017, will be only the fourth Canadian on a long‑duration ISS mission and will be in orbit when his wife is expected to give birth, a personal detail that underlines the human side of the flight as the agency plans for the ISS's end of service around 2030.