Cape Canaveral, Florida, Feb 13, 2026, 09:25 (EST)
- SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifted off at 5:15 a.m. with four astronauts bound for the International Space Station
- Crew Dragon “Freedom” is due to dock Saturday afternoon, restoring the station’s usual seven-person crew
- NASA says the roughly eight-month mission will focus on medical and technology research for future Moon and Mars flights
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried four astronauts into orbit from Florida early on Friday, sending NASA’s Crew-12 mission toward the International Space Station for an eight-month science expedition. “Thank you team, that was quite a ride,” commander Jessica Meir radioed after the Crew Dragon capsule, “Freedom,” separated into space. (Reuters)
The flight follows an unusual stretch for the station after NASA cut short the prior crew rotation for medical reasons, leaving fewer people on board and pushing some work back, including spacewalks. Deputy program manager Dina Contella said upgrades to space medicine only go so far: “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space.” (ABC News)
NASA said the capsule should dock autonomously at about 3:15 p.m. on Saturday, returning the outpost to its standard seven-person staffing after the Jan. 14 departure of Crew-11. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the launch again showed the “professionalism, preparation, and teamwork required for human spaceflight,” adding that the research planned on orbit “advances critical technologies for deep space exploration” while producing benefits on Earth. (NASA)
Crew-12 is led by Meir, 48, a veteran astronaut and marine biologist on her second space station mission. She is joined by NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, 43, the mission pilot and a first-time spaceflier.
The other two seats go to Europe and Russia: European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, 43, from France, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, a former military pilot on his second ISS mission.
Freedom’s trip to the station is expected to take roughly 34 hours, with the spacecraft aiming for an autonomous docking at the Harmony module. The astronauts will live and work about 250 miles (420 km) above Earth, in microgravity — the near-weightless conditions created by constant free-fall in orbit.
NASA has said the research slate includes studies of pneumonia-causing bacteria, work on generating intravenous fluids on demand, and tests that track plant health automatically. Other experiments will examine plant interactions with nitrogen-fixing microbes, a line of work tied to growing food on longer missions.
SpaceX plans to oversee the capsule’s automated maneuvers from its mission control center in Hawthorne, California, while NASA tracks station operations from Houston. After liftoff, the Falcon 9’s reusable first-stage booster returned to Earth and landed back at Cape Canaveral, a routine step that has become central to SpaceX’s launch cadence.
But a smooth launch does not lock in the rest of the timeline. Docking times can shift if controllers spot an issue on the spacecraft, or if weather limits options for contingency splashdowns, and NASA has released few details about the medical problem that forced the earlier return of the previous crew.
When Crew-12 arrives, Meir and her crewmates are set to be welcomed by the three station residents who kept the lab running through the gap: NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud‑Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.
The International Space Station is operated by a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries. NASA has said it is committed to operating the station through the end of 2030, after more than a quarter century of continuous human presence.
Crew-12 also lands in the middle of NASA’s long-running push to keep two U.S. crew-transport options alive. NASA and Boeing have modified Boeing’s Starliner contract and are targeting an uncrewed Starliner-1 mission no earlier than April 2026 as testing continues on the spacecraft’s propulsion system. (NASA)
Much of the work on board is framed around Artemis, NASA’s Moon-to-Mars program. NASA has said Artemis II — a crewed test flight around the Moon — could launch as early as next month, making station research on health and life support feel less academic than it sounds.
