Crew 13 Preview

NASA and SpaceX have established a no earlier time than Thursday October 1st at 11:10 AM Crew-13 will lift off from SLC 40 on Cape Canaveral with Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney from NASA, Joshua Kutryk from the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov from Roscosmos as a regular crew rotation on the International Space Station to continue the research and science aboard the orbiting laboratory. The crew will replace the crew 12 and join Expedition 75 and 76 in the planned six to eight month ISS rotation and for a time will both be in board until crew handoff is complete and will return and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off of the coast of California.

The crew Dragon Grace will be carrying the crew from the pad to the ISS on its second flight, previously flying on Axiom 4 and it will be pushed to orbit by Falcon 9 booster 1101 on its third flight, previously on Starlink 6-88 and Crew 12. The launch trajectory for this flight will be to the northeast as all crewed flights to the ISS are and make use of defined Dragon capsule abort zones along the eastern US and towards the Northern Atlantic Ocean. Because of this, weather along the abort zones will be a possible launch constraint and SpaceX and NASA will have to verify weather is go along ascent corridor as well. If you are along the eastern coast of Florida (Jacksonville to Titusville), Georgia coast or South Carolina coast there is a possibility you could see the launch depending on the cloud cover near you.

The importance of the ISS cannot be overstated from imaging, to testing new manufacturing techniques, agriculture and biomedical engineering advances in tissue regrowth and testing. While the ISS is coming to the end of its life cycle, the presence in low earth orbit will not as private space stations are in the works. The similarities in the patches from Apollo 13 and crew 13 isn't lost either. Apollo thirteen had "Ex Luna Scientia" on it translated means "From the Moon Knowledge". Crew 13 is continuing in the footsteps of Apollo program in continuing to gain knowledge in low earth orbit to better the lives of humanity.