SpaceX launched a new crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station on Thursday, as questions swirl over the company's plans for the future of its human spaceflight program. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov lifted off aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule at 11:10 a.m. local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The mission, called Crew-13, reached orbit, and the capsule separated from the Falcon 9 rocket about nine and a half minutes after liftoff. The crew spent roughly eight hours in orbit approaching the ISS before docking with the station around 7 p.m. New York time, according to SpaceX.
The crew will live and work on the ISS for the next six months. The mission is the latest in a series of flights that SpaceX performs for NASA to ensure the ISS is staffed at all times.
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Docking confirmed! pic.twitter.com/Y1xwyaevSL
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 1, 2026
However, the flight may be one of the final few missions that SpaceX flies with Dragon, which Elon Musk's company built with partial NASA funding to send supplies and people to the space station. SpaceX has indicated that it will retire the capsule in the near future, potentially when the ISS program comes to an end by 2030.
“I do not think it's a secret that SpaceX intends to sunset older platforms like Falcon and Dragon as they concentrate on their next-generation capability, Starship,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at a press conference on Monday.
Beyond Crew-13, NASA has contracted SpaceX to perform at least four more crew rotation missions to the space station with Dragon through the end of 2030.
Beyond that time frame, it's unclear whether SpaceX will opt to continue flying the vehicle. SpaceX's president Gwynne Shotwell said during the All-In Summit in September that the company wouldn't be retiring Dragon “today” but intends to transition all business to Starship, the massive rocket that's still in development and is meant to carry humans to space sometime in the future.
When asked about an exact time frame for Dragon's retirement, a SpaceX official didn't provide an answer during a pre-launch press conference and said the company is mostly focused on the flights it already has under contract with NASA.
“We're going to continue to support these near-term things, and then we'll see what the future brings,” William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, said during the conference on Wednesday.
In the meantime, NASA renewed its commitment to working with Boeing Co., which developed its own capsule called Starliner to send people to and from the ISS. Starliner underwent intense scrutiny in 2024 after it experienced engine issues during a crewed test flight that caused two astronauts to remain in space for nine months longer than planned.
Despite those issues, NASA officials expressed confidence in Boeing's ability to fix Starliner's issues during a press conference on Monday. The agency indicated that it would potentially purchase more Starliner flights, with the next crewed mission slated for 2028 at the earliest.
For now, SpaceX's Dragon is still flying for NASA without interruption.
The nearly eight-hour trip to the station marked the fastest trip of a US spacecraft, from launch to docking, in the history of the ISS, according to NASA.
Roughly a week from now, the four astronauts of Crew-12, who have been living on the station for the last six months, will climb into their own Dragon and return home to Earth.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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