{"id":629416,"date":"2026-09-27T21:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/629416\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:00:15","slug":"crew-13-arrives-at-kennedy-space-center-before-big-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/629416\/","title":{"rendered":"Crew-13 arrives at Kennedy Space Center before big launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER \u2014 NASA\u2019s Crew-13 arrived in style at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon as they prepare for a multi-month mission on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

Luke\u00a0Delaney, a Volusia County native, will be the pilot for the Crew-13 mission<\/p>\n

Flying in T-38N Talon jets, the four members of Crew-13 arrived at NASA Kennedy\u2019s Shuttle Landing Facility. Mission pilot Luke Delaney and Canadian Space Agency\u2019s astronaut Joshua Kutryk flew the jets from outside of NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston earlier in the morning.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Dr. Jessica Watkins will command the mission, while Delaney, a Volusia County native, will be the pilot for SpaceX\u2019s Dragon capsule.<\/p>\n

Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov will be mission specialists.<\/p>\n

Watkins is a space veteran who was part of the Crew-4 mission in 2022<\/a>. She spent 170 days in space.<\/p>\n

The rest of her crew are all first-timers when it comes to trekking into space.<\/p>\n

During a question-and-answer session with the press, Delaney told Spectrum News\u2019 question about what it feels like to be so close to his hometown of Debary, which was about 50 miles away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels great; it just might be the weather, but I think it actually is coming here to Kennedy and coming back to Florida is definitely near and dear to my heart,\u201d he said, adding that he used to watch the shuttle launches. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The four will be spending months conducting many experiments that will benefit the Artemis moon missions, they said during Saturday\u2019s press conference.<\/p>\n

Watkins said that as a geologist, she hopes that her observations of Earth from the space station could be used for future lunar missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we can learn from (the observations) as we take that to the moon and use our remote observations of the moon to help us understand what to expect when we are able to step foot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kutryk said that a European Space Agency experiment is an exercise device that could be used on the moon.<\/p>\n

The launch is scheduled for 11:10 a.m. ET, Thursday, Oct. 01.<\/p>\n

The changing Crew-13 launch dates<\/p>\n

Originally, Crew-13 was supposed to launch in November, but the U.S. space agency wanted to make it earlier to grow the U.S. crew rotation\u2019s frequency.<\/p>\n

So, NASA was eyeing the launch of SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft no earlier than mid-September; however, an oxidizer leak was discovered on Dragon\u2019s propulsion system, so the mission was pushed back.<\/p>\n

When the astronauts enter the floating laboratory for their more than six-month mission, they will become members of Expedition 75.<\/p>\n

An expedition means the current crew of the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The mission will mark the 13th crew rotation with SpaceX to the space station, which is a part of\u00a0NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The program allows NASA to partner with private space companies to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The four will be spending months conducting many experiments that will benefit the Artemis moon missions, they said during Saturday\u2019s press conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KENNEDY SPACE CENTER \u2014 NASA\u2019s Crew-13 arrived in style at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[32134,120072,32137,120070,17452,46954,85,91616,120071,46,120069,43,8467,141,145,39711,125,38,91617],"class_list":["post-629416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-all-markets-rank-everywhere","tag-anthony-leone","tag-app-for-your-consideration","tag-app-space","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brevard-county","tag-il","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-instagram-n13","tag-israel","tag-new-space-race","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-science","tag-space","tag-tampa","tag-technology","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}