SpaceX Crew-13 docks at ISS in record 7 hours 55 minutes, fastest U.S. flight yet

SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon capsule, Grace, docked with the International Space Station at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT) on Thursday, 1 October — just 7 hours and 55 minutes after launching — setting the record for the fastest launch-to-docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the station’s history (NASA, Florida Today).

The capsule linked up with the Harmony module’s forward port, followed by standard leak checks and pressurisation ahead of hatch opening at about 8:45 p.m. EDT (NASA). Liftoff had come at 11:10 a.m. local time (1510 GMT) from Cape Canaveral (AFP). Aboard were NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, who will spend six months on the station (AFP).

The previous U.S. record was 12 hours 33 minutes, set in November 2024 by the robotic Dragon cargo flight CRS-31; the fastest crewed U.S. trip before this was 14 hours 43 minutes by Crew-11 in August 2025. The overall ISS speed record remains Russia’s Soyuz, which reached the station 3 hours 3 minutes after launch in May 2020 using an aggressive two-orbit “fast-track” trajectory (Space.com).

“We got lucky this time,” said Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX’s director of NASA science and Dragon programs, at the post-launch briefing. “The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the shortest launch-to-docking time we’ve had to date,” she added, noting “this is close to the fastest it could be” (Space.com).