New Crew Launches to the ISS: Mission Guide and How to Spot the Handover

When you look up at the night sky over the coming days, the small moving star gliding across the heavens will carry a special story within. The International Space Station is welcoming four new residents in a pinpoint orbital maneuver that temporarily transforms the outpost's routine and offers one of the most exciting viewing opportunities for stargazers on the ground.

Knowing what is happening on board while you watch that streak of light cross over your roof completely transforms the experience. It is not merely a bright dot reflecting sunlight, but the temporary home of eleven people working in unison as Earth turns beneath their feet.

What happened

A Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:10 a.m. EDT, propelling NASA and SpaceX's Crew-13 mission into space. As reported by Spaceflight Now, the Crew Dragon spacecraft is carrying four crew members on a six-month expedition to the orbital outpost: NASA Commander Jessica Watkins, NASA Pilot Luke Delaney, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk.

The launch marks a significant technical milestone within the commercial crew program. Jessica Watkins has become the first NASA astronaut to fly a repeat mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, having previously served on the Crew-4 expedition. The ascent proceeded smoothly up to low-Earth orbit insertion, at which point the spacecraft began its autonomous rendezvous sequence through periodic burns of its Draco thrusters.

Using Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral for this crewed launch also solidifies a vital alternative infrastructure to maintain a steady cadence of crew and cargo flights, avoiding bottlenecks with other heavy exploration or defense missions that require historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.

Why it matters

For those of us tracking the orbital outpost day by day, a crewed launch is far more than a spectacular show in Florida—it marks the start of a critical logistical and scientific handover phase. The station has been continuously occupied for over two decades, but the arrival of a new spacecraft alters daily life in space for nearly two weeks.

Right now, according to real-time data from our tracker, the station is home to seven crew members: Jessica Meir, Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov, Jack Hathaway, Anil Menon, Andrei Fedyaev, and Sophie Adenot. With the arrival of the four Crew-13 astronauts, the onboard population will rise to eleven people simultaneously. You can explore each crew member's profile and background in our dedicated guide to the current ISS crew.

This temporary crowd requires adjustments to daily routines across the outpost: sleeping bags are set up in additional modules such as Japan's Kibo or Europe's Columbus laboratory, and life support systems run at full capacity scrubbing carbon dioxide and recycling water. During this handover period, the departing crew briefs the newcomers on the operational status of every subsystem, ongoing biological experiments, and protocols for potential contingencies.

Furthermore, the coordinated presence of agencies such as NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, and CSA reinforces the cross-border nature of the project. While geopolitical debates persist on Earth's surface, hundreds of kilometers above, orbital physics and survival in the vacuum dictate strict technical cooperation, where every pass, docking, and maneuver relies on joint efforts between mission control centers in Houston, Moscow, Munich, and Tsukuba.

What to look for in the sky

For those watching the station from a backyard or balcony, the hours before and after docking offer an extraordinary spectacle. At this moment, our tracker's sensors place the ISS cruising at an altitude of 429 km and a staggering speed of 27,567 km/h. The Crew Dragon capsule initially enters a lower orbit to exploit orbital mechanics: at lower altitudes, spacecraft travel faster relative to the ground, closing the gap with the station in a maneuver known as orbital pursuit.

If clear skies align with the hours leading up to docking, you might witness an unforgettable sight. When checking our tool on what time the ISS passes over your area, look for evening or morning passes that coincide with the rendezvous phase. During these favorable passes, the naked eye can spot two points of light moving along the same path: one brilliantly bright (the space station itself, rivaling the planet Venus in magnitude) and a dimmer one trailing close behind by just a few degrees (the Dragon preparing for its final approach).

To maximize your chances of spotting them, keep these practical tips in mind:

• Find an unobstructed view toward the horizon where the pass begins, clear of streetlights or tall buildings that could block the start of its trajectory.
• You do not need expensive telescopes or binoculars; the station is easily visible to the naked eye as a steady, bright star that does not twinkle or flash colored lights.
• The best visibility occurs between 45 minutes and an hour and a half after sunset or before sunrise, when the ground is dark but the station's solar arrays still catch direct sunlight at an altitude of 429 km.
• Once docking is complete at Harmony module's forward or zenith port, the station's overall reflectivity increases slightly, making it appear exceptionally crisp on passes exceeding 60 degrees above your local horizon.

Understanding these dynamics turns every sighting into a rewarding exercise in backyard astronomy. Grasping the mechanics of these rendezvous and learning how to anticipate elevation above the horizon are covered in depth in our guide to spotting the ISS in the sky, ideal if you are tracking the complex for the first time.

The rendezvous between Watkins's Dragon and the space station is a vivid reminder that the final frontier is much closer than we think. Open our interactive tracker map, check when it will fly over your city at 27,567 km/h, and get ready to wave to the eleven astronauts orbiting together through our planet's night.