NASA and SpaceX confirmed an Oct. 1 launch date for Crew-13 this week, clearing the way for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk to finish a nearly two-decade path to orbit, while a new Progress cargo ship reached the International Space Station and the outgoing crew kept up a full research schedule.
After delay, Kutryk set for launch
Kutryk, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot chosen as one of Canada’s two 2017 astronaut candidates, spent the week on final refresher training, including practice captures on Canadarm2 at a cupola simulator at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “If we mess that up, if we miss the capture, or if we bump into something doing the capture, it can quite literally mean the end of space station. It’s a time-perishable skill,” he said in a profile SpaceQ published Sept. 24.
According to the profile, the mission has already tested his own advice about adjusting to change: Crew-13 had been scheduled to lift off Sept. 12 before an oxidizer leak in Dragon’s propulsion system pushed the date into October, and NASA and SpaceX have since set 11:10 a.m. EDT on Oct. 1 as the earliest launch opportunity.
Kutryk will be the second Canadian Space Agency astronaut in orbit this year, after Jeremy Hansen’s trip around the moon on Artemis II this past April, and the first Canadian to reach the space station since David Saint-Jacques in 2018-19 — the fourth Canadian on a long-duration station mission overall, and the first through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, the CSA said in a Sept. 22 mission advisory. He is flying with NASA commander Jessica Watkins, NASA pilot Luke Delaney and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov for what is expected to be a six-month stay.
Cargo ship arrives
A new Progress spacecraft reached the station this week. The uncrewed Progress 96 launched Sept. 16 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked at the station’s Poisk module on Sept. 19, carrying about three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 75 crew, NASA said. It’s expected to stay berthed for about five months before a destructive re-entry that disposes of station trash. Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina and Andrey Fedyaev spent the following days unloading it.
Science and technology experiments
Commander Jessica Meir took turns with crewmates testing EchoFinder-2, an ultrasound system that uses augmented reality and artificial intelligence to help position the probe and identify organs, technology that NASA said in a Sept. 24 mission update could eventually let crews handle their own medical scans without guidance from the ground. The same update described European Space Agency (ESA) flight engineer Sophie Adenot wearing a Bio-Monitor vest and headband while exercising for an hour on the Destiny laboratory’s cycle, tracking her blood pressure, heart rate and breathing as part of the same long-duration health study.
Flight engineer Anil Menon processed blood samples for the Immunity Assay investigation, centrifuging and freezing them for later analysis of how weightlessness affects the body’s ability to fight infection, according to NASA’s Sept. 23 mission update, which also had flight engineer Jack Hathaway collecting samples from the station’s water dispenser to check for microbial contamination. Earlier in the week, Menon finished a lead-free soldering demonstration called MIYOKA, testing whether astronauts can safely repair electronics in microgravity, while Meir practiced a simulated lunar descent to study how weightlessness affects a pilot’s judgment.
Meir and Hathaway also logged body measurements using the EveryWear app for a study of how spinal elongation and fluid shifts change an astronaut’s fit inside a spacesuit, part of the work detailed in NASA’s Sept. 21 update. The same Sept. 18 recap had Adenot working out on a new European exercise device before relaying her smartwatch’s biomedical data to flight surgeons for RelaxPro, a stress-and-sleep investigation, while cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina wore acoustic monitors tracking their breathing for a respiratory study of their own.
Looking ahead
Crew-13 is set to lift off at 11:10 a.m. EDT on Oct. 1 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with docking expected that evening at the station’s Harmony module. Kutryk and his three crewmates were left quarantine in Houston for Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 26. Once Crew-13 arrives, Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrey Fedyaev — who will have spent nearly eight months in orbit — are expected to return to Earth aboard their own Dragon spacecraft next month.
NASA has also named its next rotation which is expect to fly in the spring 2027: Crew-14, made up of NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Chris Birch, JAXA astronaut Makoto Suwa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan.