Jessica Watkins to Command NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 Mission to ISS

On October 1, NASA astronaut and former Caltech postdoc Jessica Watkins will command the SpaceX Crew-13 mission, which will transport a team of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission will focus on research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities aboard the ISS.

This marks Watkins’ second flight to the space station. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017 after earning her undergraduate degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from UCLA. As a geologist, she studied the Martian surface and served on the Curiosity rover science team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech.

Watkins was part of the research group led by John Grotzinger, the Harold Brown Professor of Geology and former Project Scientist of the Curiosity Rover. She previously launched to the space station on NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission in 2022, where she spent 170 days in space during Expeditions 67 and 68. With this upcoming mission, she will become the first NASA astronaut to launch twice aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.