Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk will not fly to the International Space Station in September as planned. His launch has been moved to October 1, after technical problems turned up during final checks on the spacecraft. The delay pushes back a mission that would mark his first trip to space.
Kutryk is assigned to Crew 13, a joint NASA and SpaceX mission that will carry him aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. He was originally slated to fly on Boeing's Starliner, but he was reassigned after the company's development problems and safety concerns from its early crewed flights. Once in orbit, he is expected to spend about six months on the station.
The crew also includes NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, along with Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteriatnikov. The mixed-nationality lineup reflects the continued cooperation between the United States and Russia aboard the station, even as relations between the two countries remain strained on other fronts.
If the flight goes ahead as scheduled, Kutryk will be the first Canadian to fly on a joint NASA-SpaceX crew rotation. His flight would follow closely behind Jeremy Hansen's lunar flyby on the Artemis II mission, which took place about six months earlier and placed Canada firmly in the human spaceflight picture.
Kutryk's planned work aboard the station centers on materials science, biology and Earth observation. He is also bringing along a personal item: a family heirloom pocket watch that has already flown to the station once on a cargo mission.
We rewrote this story on 4 November 2026 after an editorial review.
Credit. Based on reporting by Streamline Newsroom for Streamline. Is this your work? Write to us.
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