Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk and his three Crew-13 crewmates suited up and climbed into their Dragon spacecraft at the launch pad Tuesday, a dress rehearsal two days before their planned liftoff for the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA said the crew spent the morning in the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center, where they put on spacesuits and ran air leak checks. They then rode to Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and entered the capsule. Kutryk will fly with NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.
Liftoff is set for no earlier than 11:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) Thursday, Oct. 1. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon rolled out to the pad Sunday and were raised upright. NASA said teams there ran an integrated static fire, a short engine test with the rocket held down, and then reviewed the data.
NASA’s live launch coverage begins at 9:20 a.m. EDT Thursday, NASA said Saturday. A pre-launch news conference is set for 2:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 30.
Switch from Starliner
Kutryk was first assigned in November 2023 to Starliner-1, what was to have been the first operational flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, alongside NASA astronauts Scott Tingle and Mike Fincke. Problems with the spacecraft, including thruster flaws, delayed that flight indefinitely. He was reassigned to Crew-13 as a mission specialist, the CSA announced April 23.
Speaking to reporters Saturday, after the crew landed in Florida, Kutryk said the change of vehicles had been “nothing but wonderful” for him personally. He has been through two training programs and learned two spacecraft.
Much of the training overlaps, he said, because both crews must handle emergencies and understand the orbital mechanics and docking systems. But the switch gave him “a first row seat into the differences between the approaches taken and the companies.”
“I don’t know that there’s a right way or a wrong way,” Kutryk said, “but certainly when it comes to some aspects of training, there have been differences between the two.” He did not go into detail. He said having two capable vehicles was a reason NASA set up the commercial crew program as it did, and that it leaves the United States and its partners well placed.
In April, Kutryk said of the Starliner-1 crew, “we did everything but get in and launch.” Of Crew-13, he said, “we’ve done everything – and we’re hopefully going to launch.”
Starliner may yet fly as the New York Times reported yesterday that NASA is investing $359 million to help keep the spacecraft program going.
Oxidizer leak delay
Kutryk is the first Canadian to launch to orbit under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and the second Canadian on a Dragon, after Mark Pathy flew on the private Axiom Ax-1 mission in 2022. His is the first CSA mission to the ISS since David Saint-Jacques’ in 2018-19.
Crew-13’s launch was first planned for no earlier than Sept. 12. Kutryk said Sept. 24 that an oxidizer leak in Dragon’s propulsion system caused the delay. He described it as a “very small, minor signature,” and said SpaceX also swapped some components. Watkins, the mission commander, told reporters Saturday that SpaceX teams found the problem on the ground with time to fix it, and that the crew used the extra weeks for more training, including work on possible spacewalks.
Watkins will become the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a Dragon twice, NASA said. The other three crew members are making their first flights.
After Crew-13 arrives, the Crew-12 astronauts will brief them on station science and maintenance, NASA said. Crew-12 (NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev) will then fly home for a splashdown off California, weather permitting.