Published : 03 Oct 2026, 06:01 PM
Updated : 03 Oct 2026, 06:01 PM
A crew of four astronauts has arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in under eight hours, the fastest journey ever made by a US spacecraft, with Jessica Watkins becoming the first Black woman to command a crew to orbit.
SpaceX's Dragon capsule, “Grace”, lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday at 11:10am local time (1510 GMT) for a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission, according to The Guardian.
The launch was delayed by three weeks after engineers repaired a leak in the capsule's fuel system, while clouds threatened to force another postponement.
The capsule docked with the station seven hours and 55 minutes after liftoff. The previous crew to launch from US soil took more than 30 hours to make the journey.
Watkins, a geologist who once worked on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, is on her second ISS trip after a long stay in 2022.
Her crewmates are all first-time space travellers: American Luke Delaney, Canadian Joshua Kutryk, and Russian Sergey Teteryatnikov.
They will spend six months aboard, taking over from four astronauts who have been there since February.
The mission, Crew-13, is the 13th crew flight SpaceX has flown for NASA, excluding the 2020 test flight.
The number is a nod to Apollo 13, and the crew leaned into it with "Lucky 13" car plates and a small crocheted dragon mascot.
Kutryk will miss a family milestone. His wife, Heather, is due to give birth to their third child in late November, which would make him the fourth man to become a father while in space.
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency say they will help him stay connected, reports The Guardian.
SpaceX also launched a Falcon rocket carrying more than 100 small satellites from California on Thursday.
The launches follow the company's Starship reaching orbit for the first time earlier this week.
