SpaceX Crew Led by First Black Female Commander Sets US Speed Record

Four astronauts reached the International Space Station on Thursday after an express SpaceX flight that set a United States speed record and made history with the first Black woman to command a crew to orbit. Commander Jessica Watkins and her Crew-13 colleagues docked 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Guardian and DW reported.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:10 a.m. local time (1510 GMT) carrying the Dragon capsule named Grace. Thick morning clouds threatened a scrub, but skies cleared enough for a safe launch after a three-week delay to fix a leaking fuel system on the capsule. “Thanks for an amazing ride,” Watkins radioed after liftoff, according to the Associated Press story carried by the Guardian.

A record US trip — but not the world mark

Nasa said the docking was the fastest trip by a US spacecraft to the ISS, beating not only previous SpaceX missions but also earlier Nasa flights. Travel time depends heavily on how far the station is from the launch site at liftoff; the previous US crew needed more than 30 hours. A Russian Soyuz still holds the overall record, reaching the station in just over three hours in October 2020, DW noted.

In a Nasa TV broadcast, the capsule glided toward the station as both flew at about 17,500 mph (28,100 km/h). Watkins, American pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Joshua Kutryk and Russian Sergey Teteryatnikov floated aboard and spoke to mission control. “We are so excited to be here. This is truly a special place,” Watkins said. “It’s amazing and kind of ironic to think that it’s such a short trip to get here because the journey to get here has been long.”

Who is on Crew-13

Watkins, a geologist who worked with Nasa’s Mars rover Curiosity, is making her second station visit after a long stay in 2022. With Thursday’s launch she became the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit. Delaney is a retired US Marine; Kutryk is a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force; Teteryatnikov is a former submariner. The three men are first-time flyers.

The crew will stay about six months, replacing astronauts who have lived on the station since February. Despite the collapse of many other US–Russia partnerships after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the two countries still cooperate on the ISS, DW reported. Nasa has committed to operating the station through 2030.

Lucky 13 touches

Mission planners leaned into the Crew-13 name, a nod to Apollo 13. The astronauts rode to the pad in black Teslas with “Lucky 13” plates and carried a crocheted golden dragon mascot named Lucky with a four-leaf clover. “We figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring a little of our own luck just in case, but clearly we don’t need it,” Watkins said from orbit, calling the crew “four of the luckiest humans on or off planet Earth.”

Kutryk’s wife is due to give birth to their third child in late November while he is in orbit, which would make him the fourth man to become a father in space. Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency said they would help keep him connected to his family.

Hours after Crew-13 launched, SpaceX flew another Falcon from California with more than 100 small satellites, underscoring a busy week for the company after its Starship vehicle reached orbit for the first time. For Watkins and her crew, the hard part of the journey — months of science, station maintenance and international teamwork about 250 miles above Earth — is only beginning in earnest now. Crew-13 is SpaceX’s thirteenth operational Nasa crew mission.