Crew-13 Docks at ISS in Record-Fast 7 Hours 55 Minutes

SpaceX's Crew-13 Dragon Grace reached the ISS in 7 hours 55 minutes, the fastest trip ever by an American spacecraft, and docked on October 1.

SpaceX's Crew-13 Dragon capsule, named Grace, docked with the International Space Station at 7:05 p.m. EDT on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Florida's Space Coast at 11:10 a.m. According to NASA officials cited by space.com, that is the fastest any American spacecraft has ever reached the orbiting lab. The capsule carried four spaceflyers — NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov — who cruised at roughly 17,500 mph on the way up.

The previous fastest American docking came from an uncrewed Dragon cargo capsule, the CRS-31 resupply flight in November 2024, at 12 hours and 33 minutes; the fastest crewed U.S. trip was Crew-11's 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, per space.com. SpaceX's Julianna Scheiman told reporters the record came down to luck: the station sat in an opportune spot, and the orbital mechanics worked out for the shortest launch-to-docking time to date — close to the fastest physically possible. It still trails Russia's 3-hour, 3-minute Soyuz sprint of May 2020, which reflects Moscow's aggressive fast-track trajectory choices rather than rocket power.

Commander Jessica Watkins, a geologist, becomes the first NASA astronaut to fly twice aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, having flown on Crew-4 in 2022, Spaceflight Now reports. Pilot Luke Delaney, a former research pilot from DeBary, Florida, grew up watching shuttle launches. Mission specialist Joshua Kutryk is the second Canadian to fly in 2026 after Artemis 2's Jeremy Hansen; he was originally assigned to Boeing Starliner-1 before that flight was converted to cargo. Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, selected for training in 2021, rounds out the international quartet.

The crew joins Expedition 75 for roughly six months, with much of the research focused on how bodies respond to extended microgravity. Outlets report studies including Venous Haemostasis, a NASA-ESA look at circulation and clotting risk; Manual Piloting, testing lunar-landing simulations after months in weightlessness; B-Complex, probing whether B vitamins can curb spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome; plus Spacecraft Occupant Risk and Zero T2 exercise studies. Watkins said the station offers a platform for Earth observation that feeds directly into preparations for the Moon.

The liftoff nearly slipped on weather — WESH reported a 60% chance of launch as of 11 a.m. — but Falcon 9 booster B1101, flying for the third time, lifted off on time and returned to a touchdown at Landing Zone 40. Per Spaceflight Now, that marked the seventh LZ-40 landing and the 664th Falcon booster landing overall. Less than 13 hours later, a Falcon Heavy was due to launch the classified NROL-97 national security payload from Kennedy's Pad 39A, making two SpaceX launches from Florida in a single day.

With Crew-13 aboard, the outgoing Crew-12 quartet — NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the ESA's Sophie Adenot, and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — can depart as soon as Monday, October 5, in their own Dragon, according to NASA officials cited by space.com. Ahead on the manifest are the CRS-35 cargo resupply flight and an unpiloted Boeing Starliner test flight planned for year's end. The record-fast transit sets a new benchmark for Dragon rendezvous planning, even if it depended on a favorable station geometry that future missions cannot always count on.