Four astronauts could lift off for the International Space Station as early as next week, capping a turbulent period for NASA’s commercial crew program marked by a rare medical evacuation, last-minute rocket concerns, and schedule clashes with the agency’s flagship Moon mission.
The SpaceX Crew-12 mission is currently targeting a February 11 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1100 GMT. But the timeline remains uncertain after SpaceX announced it had temporarily grounded all flights of its Falcon 9 rocket to investigate an unspecified issue with the vehicle’s upper stage. While the problem is unrelated to the astronauts or spacecraft, it has injected fresh uncertainty into an already dynamic launch schedule.
The Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" is moved toward a hangar. Credit: SpaceX via X
Crew-12 will carry NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev to orbit aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Freedom. Meir, a former marine biologist who has studied life in extreme environments, will serve as mission commander, while Hathaway will fly as pilot. The four are expected to remain on the station for around nine months — longer than the typical six-month expedition — to help restore normal operations after a disruptive start to the year.
The mission has taken on added urgency following the January return of Crew-11, which came home roughly a month early during the first medical evacuation in the ISS’s 25-year history. NASA has not disclosed details of the health issue, saying only that the astronaut was stable and did not require an emergency evacuation. In the aftermath, the orbiting laboratory has been operating with a reduced “skeleton crew” of just three astronauts, limiting everything from routine maintenance to scientific research.
To relieve that understaffed situation as quickly as possible, NASA and SpaceX moved Crew-12’s launch forward from mid-February to February 11. The shift also helped avoid a scheduling conflict with Artemis 2, NASA’s first crewed mission around the Moon in more than half a century. Artemis 2 had been targeting a February 6–11 launch window before hydrogen leaks discovered during final testing forced the mission to slip to no earlier than March 6.
Once aboard, Crew-12 will help return the ISS to its normal complement of seven crew members, stabilizing station operations after an unusually strained period. The laboratory, which orbits about 400 kilometers above Earth, has been continuously inhabited since 2000 but is approaching the final chapter of its life. Current plans call for the ageing, football-field-sized outpost to be deliberately deorbited in 2030, ending its long run as a centerpiece of human spaceflight.
Despite rising geopolitical tensions on Earth, the ISS has remained a rare arena of cooperation between the United States, Europe, and Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That partnership has not been without strain. In November, veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev — long expected to fly on Crew-12 — was abruptly removed from the mission. Independent Russian media reported that Artemyev was accused of photographing and transmitting classified material, though Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said only that he had been reassigned. Fedyaev, who previously flew to the station on Crew-6 in 2023, was named as his replacement.
During their extended stay, the Crew-12 astronauts will conduct a wide range of experiments, including studies on how microgravity affects the human body. Adenot, a helicopter pilot and astronaut with the European Space Agency, will also test a system that combines artificial intelligence and augmented reality to allow astronauts to perform medical ultrasounds on themselves — technology that could prove critical for future deep-space missions.
For Adenot, the flight carries deep personal meaning. She will become only the second French woman to fly to space, following Claudie Haigneré’s mission to the Mir space station decades ago. Adenot has recalled watching that launch as a 14-year-old and deciding, in that moment, that she wanted to follow the same path. “It was a revelation,” she said recently. “At that moment, I told myself: one day, that will be me.”
If the February 11 attempt is scrubbed, additional launch opportunities are available on the following two days. Much now hinges on how quickly SpaceX can resolve its Falcon 9 investigation — and whether Crew-12 can finally bring a measure of calm and continuity back to humanity’s outpost in orbit.
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