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SpaceX Crew-13 reaches the space station in about eight hours, after a ride to the pad in 'Lucky 13' Teslas3 min

SpaceX Crew-13 reaches the space station in about eight hours, after a ride to the pad in 'Lucky 13' Teslas

SpaceX ·

Four astronauts launched on SpaceX's Crew Dragon Grace on October 1 and docked with the ISS in record time for NASA. As on every NASA crew flight with SpaceX since 2020, they rode to the rocket in Tesla cars.

SpaceX launched NASA's Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station on Thursday, October 1, and the crew arrived in record time. The Crew Dragon capsule Grace lifted off on a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:10 a.m. Eastern time and docked about eight hours later, which Spaceflight Now described as a NASA record.

The crew and the flight

  • Commander: Jessica Watkins, NASA. She flew on Crew-4 in 2022 and is the first NASA astronaut to launch on a Crew Dragon twice.
  • Pilot: Luke Delaney, NASA.
  • Mission specialists: Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos.

For Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov it was a first spaceflight. The Falcon 9 first stage, B1101, landed at Landing Zone 40 next to the pad on its third flight. Grace docked automatically at the forward port of the station's Harmony module at around 7 p.m. Eastern time. A Crew Dragon trip to the station usually takes 15 to 24 hours.

The launch came more than two weeks later than planned. It had been set for mid-September, but SpaceX had to replace a leaking valve in Grace's propulsion system after the problem was found in August.

The Tesla part of launch day

Before boarding, the crew left the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center and drove for about 20 minutes to the pad, in the middle of a convoy of support staff and security. NASA's blog described the vehicles as customised electric cars. According to Teslarati, they were Teslas, as on every NASA crew flight with SpaceX since 2020, and this time they carried "Lucky 13" plates, a nod to the resilience of the Apollo 13 crew.

It is a small detail, but a telling one. The ride to the pad is one of the most photographed moments of any crewed launch, and for six years it has shown a Tesla next to a SpaceX rocket. It is one of the most visible examples of how Elon Musk's companies support each other's image.

A busy day for SpaceX

Crew-13 was one of three SpaceX launches planned for the same day. A Falcon 9 lifted off from California with the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, carrying Google's first test satellite for AI computing in orbit, and a Falcon Heavy was scheduled to launch the classified NROL-97 mission from Launch Complex 39A just before midnight. The launches came only days after Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14.

Why it matters

Crew rotation flights have become routine for SpaceX, which holds NASA orders up to Crew-17. Its rival Boeing is preparing an uncrewed Starliner flight to the station no earlier than December. A faster trip to the station means less time for astronauts in a cramped capsule and shows how much SpaceX has refined its operations.

For Tesla investors, SpaceX's reliability matters more than ever. SpaceX is now a listed company, Tesla owns a small stake in it through its former xAI investment, and the two companies are increasingly linked through deals and shared technology.

What to watch next

  • The return of Crew-12, aboard the station since February, with a splashdown off Southern California expected next week.
  • Crew-13's six-month stay and its science programme.
  • Boeing's uncrewed Starliner test flight, planned for December at the earliest.
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