SpaceX launches four astronauts on six-month space station mission

SpaceX launched four astronauts toward the International Space Station on Thursday for a six-month mission that will take one crew member away from Earth when his wife gives birth to their third child.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:10 a.m. EDT, carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The crew was expected to reach the station in about eight hours, an unusually quick trip for a SpaceX crew flight.

Watkins, the mission commander, became the first Black woman to lead a crew into orbit, The Guardian reported. A geologist who previously worked with NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, she spent time aboard the station in 2022. The other three astronauts are making their first spaceflights.

“Thanks for an amazing ride,” Watkins radioed after the capsule reached orbit. Delaney, the mission’s pilot, called it “an epic ride” and thanked the NASA, SpaceX and partner teams behind the launch.

The flight had been delayed about three weeks for work on the Crew Dragon capsule’s propulsion system. CBS News reported that crews replaced a valve; The Guardian described the problem as a leaking fuel system. Thick clouds threatened Thursday’s countdown, The Guardian reported, but conditions cleared enough for liftoff.

Kutryk, a Royal Canadian Air Force colonel, and his wife, Heather, have two children, ages 5 and 7. Their third is due around Thanksgiving, roughly two months into the mission. He will become the fourth father to have a child born while he is in space, according to The Guardian.

“Leaving these three (plus one on the way) is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Kutryk wrote on X before launch. The Canadian Space Agency has promised support for his family when the baby arrives, The Guardian reported. “A lot of life-changing things can happen over six months,” NASA manager Dana Weigel said before liftoff, adding that the agency would work to keep him connected with his family.

The mission is SpaceX’s 13th operational crew flight for NASA, excluding a 2020 test flight. The astronauts’ mission patch pays tribute to Apollo 13, whose crew returned safely from a troubled moon mission in 1970, The Guardian reported. “We really wanted to honor their legacy, honor their resilience and their grit,” Watkins said.

At the station, the new arrivals will replace Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrey Fedyaev, who have been there since February. CBS News reported that the departing crew is scheduled to undock Oct. 5 and splash down off Southern California on Oct. 6 after a handover.

Watkins said the months ahead would include station maintenance, spacewalks, visiting spacecraft and research. According to CBS News, planned work includes studies of heart disease and Parkinson’s disease using tissues derived from human stem cells, as well as research into crop production and blood-flow changes in space.