Signal NASA Holds Final Briefings for International Crew-13 Space Station Mission

Summary

NASA and its partners held a pair of news conferences at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday, August 3, 2026, discussing the upcoming Crew-13 rotation mission to the International Space Station. A noon EDT briefing covered mission leadership's overview, followed by a 2 p.m. session with the crew discussing training and preparations — the mission's final media availability before travel to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch. Crew-13 comprises NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, launching aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral no earlier than mid-September. Watkins, who previously flew to the station on Crew-4 in 2022 for a 170-day stay, will become the first NASA astronaut to fly aboard a Dragon spacecraft twice. Kutryk will be the fourth CSA astronaut on a long-duration ISS mission and the first CSA astronaut flying under NASA's Commercial Crew Program; the flight is also the first spaceflight for both Delaney and Kutryk.