Crew-13 Rehearses Launch-Day Procedures Ahead of October Flight

Four astronauts completed a rehearsal at Cape Canaveral as NASA targets a departure no earlier than October 1 for a long-duration station mission.

Preparing for departure

NASA reported that the Crew-13 astronauts completed a dry dress rehearsal September 29 at Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The exercise included putting on spacesuits, conducting leak checks, traveling to the pad and entering the Dragon spacecraft.

The crew and the target

NASA’s Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney will travel with Canada’s Joshua Kutryk and Russia’s Sergey Teteryatnikov. The published launch target is no earlier than 11:10 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, October 1. The flight is intended to take the astronauts to the International Space Station for a long-duration science mission.

Why rehearse the sequence

A rehearsal lets the crew and ground teams practice a series of connected tasks before flight. Timing, communication and movement between facilities form part of that sequence. Completing the exercise is an operational milestone; it does not mean a launch has happened or that every later condition is settled.

A transition in orbit

NASA says the arriving crew will receive a handover from Crew-12 covering research and station maintenance. The departing crew’s return will depend in part on weather. Arrival and return are therefore related stages rather than one simultaneous event.

Research depends on operations

An orbiting laboratory requires transport and maintenance as well as experiments. A crew transition helps preserve the continuity of that work. The public launch moment is highly visible, while the value of the mission also depends on what the astronauts can accomplish during their stay.

Following the next milestone

The earliest departure time should be read as a target. Mission updates closer to flight will establish whether the schedule remains in place. A dated rehearsal report explains the progress already made and keeps the upcoming launch separate from the events that have been completed.