World

Four crew-12 astronauts blast off for ISS on Friday the 13th

Published: 06:02 PM,Feb 13,2026 | EDITED : 10:02 PM,Feb 13,2026

Nasa’s crew-12 members, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, Nasa astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot walk out of the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center before transport to Launch Complex 40, ahead of their launch to the ISS in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
 
Nasa’s crew-12 members, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, Nasa astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot walk out of the Operations & Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center before transport to Launch Complex 40, ahead of their launch to the ISS in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

CAPE CANAVERAL: Four astronauts were on their way to the International Space Station on Friday after they successfully embarked on their research mission to the orbiting laboratory.
The US space agency's international Crew-12 blasted off at approximately 5:15 am local time aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida, according to a Nasa video feed.
The journey takes approximately 34 hours — the astronauts are expected to arrive at the ISS and dock by about 3:15 pm eastern time on Saturday.
They will replace a crew that returned from the station early due to a medical issue with one of its members.
The pre-dawn launch was delayed by two days over adverse weather forecasts across the US East Coast, including high winds that could have complicated any potential emergency manoeuvres.
But superstitions aside, Friday the 13th proved to be their lucky day. 'I understand it's the first time Nasa has ever launched on Friday the 13th,' said Steve Stich, a Nasa official who coordinates ISS launches, with a laugh.
'Crew-12 is composed of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
'We have left the Earth, but the Earth has not left us', Meir said as the astronauts ventured into space. 'When we gaze on our planet from above, it is immediately clear that everything is interconnected'.
'We are one humankind.' The travellers are replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January a month earlier than planned in the first medical evacuation in the space station's history.
The ISS, a scientific laboratory orbiting 400 kilometres above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.
Nasa declined to disclose any details about the health issue that cut the previous mission short.
Once the astronauts arrive, they will be one of the last crews to live aboard the football field-sized space station.
Continuously inhabited for the last quarter-century, the aging ISS is scheduled to be pushed into Earth's orbit before crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.
The ISS, once a symbol of warming post-Cold War relations, has been a rare area of continued cooperation between the West and Russia since Moscow attacked Ukraine in 2022.
However, the space station has not entirely avoided the tensions back on Earth.