The understaffed International Space Station will soon have four new crew members to bring the team size back up to seven, thanks to the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday. The rocket carried a SpaceX Dragon capsule with Crew-12 aboard, and if all goes to plan, the capsule will dock with the station’s Harmony module at approximately 3:15 p.m. EST on Saturday, Feb. 14.
NASA had to return the Crew-11 team home early in January due to an ongoing medical issue with one of the astronauts. Although details were scant at the time, NASA opted to bring the entire crew home, even though the issue affected only one astronaut. That left just three crew members aboard the ISS from a Soyuz launch near the end of 2025. With the Crew-12 launch, NASA is on track to restock its space station with a full complement of astronauts.
“With Crew-12 safely on orbit, America and our international partners once again demonstrated the professionalism, preparation, and teamwork required for human spaceflight,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. “The research this crew will conduct aboard the space station advances critical technologies for deep space exploration while delivering real benefits here on Earth.”
The Crew-12 team consists of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. During their time on the station, they will conduct scientific research on pneumonia-causing bacteria, on-demand intravenous fluid generation, and the effects of blood flow on spaceflight. They’ll also experiment on plant health monitoring and several techniques for enhancing food production in space.
