The next quartet heading to the International Space Station arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon. They are scheduled to launch no earlier than 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 UTC) on Thursday, Oct. 1.
Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk and NASA astronaut Luke Delany piloted a pair of T-38 jets from NASA’s Johnson Space Center and landed at the Launch and Landing Facility under a largely cloud-less sky and with a light breeze.
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins rode alongside Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryantnikov flew with Delaney. This will be the first trip to space for all except Watkins, the commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission, who is making her second trip to space.
“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. “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 four crew members were originally slated to launch to the ISS on Sept. 12, but an oxidizer leak in their Dragon spacecraft, Grace, caused NASA and SpaceX to delay the mission while repairs were made. NASA announced the delay in an Aug. 29 Commercial Crew Program (CCP) blog post.
It was roughly two-and-a-half weeks before the next update came in a Sept. 16 ISS blog post, in which NASA simply said that SpaceX “successfully replaced an oxidizer valve in Dragon’s propulsion system after a leak was detected earlier in processing.” No further details were provided in either the ISS or CCP blogs.
“We are, first of all, so grateful to the teams on the ground, the SpaceX team here at the Cape, who were able to identify the issue with the vehicle on the ground with time to address it. And then for the teams that were able to identify the most appropriate, safest path forward to fix the issue,” Watkins said in response to a question about the repair work from Spaceflight Now.
On Friday, NASA and SpaceX held a Flight Readiness Review at KSC to review their readiness to progress towards the final steps of prelaunch preparations. That includes an engine test of the Falcon 9 rocket, which is scheduled for Sunday, and a launch day rehearsal with the crew, planned for Tuesday.
The arrival of the crew in Florida marked a homecoming for Delaney, the mission’s pilot and Florida native.
“Coming here in Kennedy, coming back to Florida, it’s definitely near and dear to my heart. I did grow up pretty close to here. I got to watch Space Shuttle launches, and now I’m going to get to see it from a little bit different perspective, I think, in the coming days,” Delaney said.
“So truly excited to be here, truly thankful for all the teams that have made it happen, and just a shout out to our aircraft operations folks today that got us the jets and everything together and made it work out a perfect flight over here today.”
The mission is also a longtime coming for Kutryk and another big moment for CSA. Kutryk will be the second Canadian to head to space this year, following Jeremy Hansen’s flight as part of the Artemis 2 mission in April.
“Today has been a day of reflecting on gratitude, frankly. I mean, I’ve flown into the Cape probably 100 times, but today is just so special,” Kutryk said. “To leave Houston, you see all the people there, all the family there. You feel the support all the way across. You see the crowds of people here. You really feel that support. And so when you talk about being grateful for everything that we have, I mean, we, the crew, we feel like some of the luckiest people in the world.”
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