SpaceX Crew-13 reaches space station in record-fast US flight
SpaceX’s Crew-13 mission docked with the International Space Station on Thursday after a flight of seven hours and 55 minutes, the fastest trip to the orbiting laboratory by a US spacecraft, according to NASA officials.
The Dragon capsule Grace launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:10 a.m. local time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Clouds, thunderstorms and gusty winds had threatened the launch, which followed a roughly three-week delay to repair a leak in the capsule’s fuel system.
The four-person crew is led by NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, who became the first Black woman to command a crew to orbit. Watkins, a geologist, previously spent 170 days in space during the Crew-4 mission in 2022. She is joined by first-time space travelers Luke Delaney of NASA, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Russia’s Roscosmos. …