Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk carried a small piece of family history into orbit Thursday: a pocket watch more than a century old. The heirloom traveled with him aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station.
Kutryk, a fourth-generation Ukrainian Canadian, joked that he brought the watch because he needed something to keep track of time. More meaningfully, however, the timepiece has remained in his family since the generation before him and serves as a reminder of how dramatically both his family and the wider world have changed.
Speaking at a prelaunch news conference in August, Kutryk said the watch gives him a chance to reflect on the extraordinary progress of the past 100 years. He also wondered what humanity might achieve over the next century if it makes the right choices.
Weather concerns threatened to complicate the launch, but the Falcon 9 and Dragon lifted off successfully at 11:10 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Kutryk launched alongside NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
Moments before liftoff, launch controllers praised the crew’s dedication to human spaceflight and offered wishes of “Godspeed.” Watkins responded by thanking the NASA, SpaceX, Canadian Space Agency and Roscosmos teams whose work made the mission possible. She said Crew-13 was ready to fly with gratitude for everyone involved.
The astronauts are expected to reach the space station in 7 hours and 50 minutes, with docking planned for 7 p.m. ET. NASA said that, if the schedule held, Crew-13 would complete the fastest journey to the ISS on record.
The Dragon’s hatch is scheduled to open at approximately 8:45 p.m. ET. After a short handover with Crew-12, which has lived aboard the station since February, the outgoing astronauts could begin their return to Earth as soon as Monday, Oct. 5.
Watkins is making her second journey into space, while Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov are spaceflight rookies. Together, the Crew-13 astronauts are expected to spend roughly six months aboard the International Space Station.
Their research will include studies aimed at improving treatment for heart disease and Parkinson’s disease. NASA said the crew will examine tissues created from human stem cells to support advances in medicine, disease modeling and drug testing. Other investigations will focus on growing crops for future long-duration missions, understanding changes in blood flow in space and evaluating new equipment designed to monitor astronaut health, according to Dana Weigel, manager of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program at the Johnson Space Center.
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Crew-13 is flying under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which uses private spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from low Earth orbit.
The timing of the rendezvous was helped by orbital mechanics. Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of Build and Flight Reliability, said the station and Dragon were positioned at nearly ideal angles after a recent station maneuver, creating unusually favorable conditions for the approach.
Lori Glaze, NASA’s associate administrator for the Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, said the new crew would quickly settle in after arrival. The transition period with Crew-12 is expected to be relatively brief before the previous team prepares to head home early the following week.
The launch had been postponed in August after environmental inspections uncovered a mechanical problem involving an oxidizer leak in Dragon’s propulsion system. SpaceX also investigated unexpected issues with the spacecraft’s GPS and a rocket-engine motor microcontroller. Following a Launch Readiness Review on Wednesday afternoon, NASA and SpaceX cleared the mission for liftoff.
Gerstenmaier acknowledged that the spacecraft had presented several surprises during preparations, but emphasized that crew safety remained the overriding priority. He said teams would continue examining the data, reviewing previous records and verifying every system before proceeding with the flight.
Although the number 13 is often associated with bad luck, the astronauts have embraced the designation. Their mission patch draws inspiration from Apollo 13, including a golden dragon modeled after the three golden horses featured on that historic mission’s emblem.
November will mark 26 years of uninterrupted human habitation aboard the space station. Since that continuous presence began, more than 280 astronauts representing 26 countries and the station’s five international partners have spent time aboard the ISS.
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