Twenty-four hours earlier, NASA's forecast said "about 8 hours 50 minutes." The spacecraft beat it. At 7:05 p.m. EDT on October 1, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Grace docked with the International Space Station's Harmony module — 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral at 11:10 a.m. NASA's space station blog confirmed that evening: the fastest launch-to-docking flight by a U.S. spacecraft in the station's history.
"At 7 hours and 55 minutes, this marked the fastest launch-to-docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station," NASA's official blog stated.
The previous American benchmark was 12 hours 33 minutes, set by the uncrewed CRS-31 cargo Dragon in November 2024; the crewed record was 14 hours 43 minutes, set by Crew-11 in August 2025. Crew-13 nearly halved the crewed mark — and arrived about an hour ahead of the pre-launch estimate.
The qualifier matters: the all-time record still belongs to Russia. The Soyuz MS-17 reached the station in 3 hours and 3 minutes in October 2020 and has never been beaten. As Space.com has explained, the gap is not about faster ships but bolder flight plans — Russian controllers favor an aggressive two-orbit "fast-track" rendezvous, while NASA and SpaceX fly more conservative profiles.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman called Crew-13 "another demonstration of America's unmatched capability in human spaceflight and the strength of our commercial partnerships."
But Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX's director of NASA science and Dragon missions, offered a humbler explanation: "We got lucky this time… 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 that the flight was close to the fastest theoretically possible. The speed came from a fortuitous launch window, not an upgraded spacecraft. Commander Jessica Watkins' only radio call after reaching orbit: "Thanks for an amazing ride."
The hatch opened at about 8:45 p.m. EDT, bringing the station's population to 11, representing NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos.
Watkins became the first Black woman to command an orbital crew. The geologist, who previously worked on the Curiosity Mars rover, completed a long-duration stay on the station in 2022. Flying with her were NASA pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk — whose wife is expected to give birth while he is in orbit — and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, continuing one of the few remaining threads of U.S.-Russia cooperation.
The four will spend about six months on the station as part of Expeditions 75 and 76, relieving Crew-12, which arrived in February and is expected to return to Earth as early as next week, weather permitting. The science manifest includes research on heart disease and Parkinson's using human stem-cell-derived tissue, crop growing for long-duration missions, and testing new medical diagnostic devices — groundwork for future missions to the Moon and Mars. The crew will also welcome SpaceX's 35th commercial resupply flight.
The station has been continuously occupied for about 25 years and is slated for retirement around 2030. Its countdown now has one more "fastest" footnote.