HOUSTON, USA, Oct. 1, 2026 - SpaceX's Crew-13 Dragon docked with the International Space Station on 1 October, bringing four space travellers aboard at 7 p.m. EDT. The spacecraft docked to the forward port of the station's Harmony module.

The crew are NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.

During the mission, NASA will conduct a series of biomedical and human performance investigations on the station.

Related coverage: Crew-13 astronauts arrive at Kennedy Space Center ahead of launch · Crew-12 astronauts return safely to Earth

Impact Insight. The International Space Station orbits about 400 km up, and visiting spacecraft dock to standard ports on its modules after a slow, carefully controlled approach. The link to planetary defense is indirect: crew traffic is part of operating in near-Earth space, where the station sometimes has to move out of the way of tracked debris.