KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — NASA was in a position it had not been for more than half a century with both the Artemis II and Crew-12 astronauts preparing for potential launches this month.
“It’s a pretty exciting time in human spaceflight. For the first time in over 60 years, we have two crews in quarantine,” said NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich during a preview press conference last week.
With a delay in Artemis II to no earlier than March because of problems with the rocket’s wet dress rehearsal, though, its crew bowed out and the SpaceX commercial crew mission to the International Space Station now has first dibs on getting to space.
The four crew members representing NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station pose for a portrait at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. From left are, Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mission Specialist Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, Crew-12 Pilot and Commander respectively, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut and Mission Specialist Sophie Adenot. (James Blair/NASA)
Commanded by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir making her second spaceflight, she’s joined by fellow NASA astronaut and pilot Jack Hathaway on his first flight, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, also a first-time flyer, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, making his second trip to space.
“We love this kind of balance that we have of two veterans and two rookies to hit the ground running when we get aboard,” said Meir, a member of NASA’s 2013 class of astronauts who flew to the station in 2019 aboard a Soyuz spending 204 days in space.
Fedyaev flew to the station as part of SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission between March-September 2023 spending nearly 186 days in space.
Hathaway is a member of NASA’s 2021 class of astronauts and will become only the third member of his class to make it to space. Adenot was selected by ESA in 2021 as well, one of only five chosen, and the first class of European astronauts since 2008.
The countdown clock at Kennedy Space Center’s press site displays the graphic for the upcoming SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, set to launch as early as Feb. 11 from neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40, seen in the distance to the right. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel)
The quartet are set to arrive Friday night to Kennedy Space Center from Houston where they have been under quarantine since Jan. 28. The earliest launch date is Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 6:01 a.m.
They will climb aboard the Crew Dragon Freedom making its fifth trip to space and launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40, making only the second human spaceflight from SLC-40. If it launches Wednesday, it’s set to dock with the space station around 2 p.m. Thursday.
The first-stage booster for the flight is making its second trip to space, but will be the first to touch back down at SpaceX’s new landing pad constructed alongside the launch tower at SLC-40, and with it could bring a sonic boom to parts of Central Florida.
Crew-12’s arrival will bring the station’s population back up to its normal complement of seven astronauts and cosmonauts as NASA elected to have the SpaceX Crew-11 mission cut short with a return a month earlier than planned after one of its four crew suffered a medical incident on board. Normally, NASA likes to have a short handover period between its crew rotations.
Still, the station hasn’t been without NASA representation as astronaut Chris Williams remained on board having flown up with two cosmonauts on a Soyuz spacecraft last year. Crew-12 after arrival will become part of Expedition 74 as the space station continues more than 25 years of continuous human presence.
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NASA’s Dina Contella, deputy manager of the International Space Station Program said in some ways, having less crew can be beneficial.
“Frankly, when you have 11 crew members on board, it’s a lot of crew members, and so you just have a lot less planning to do a lot fewer number of scheduled events,” she said. “But Chris and his new Crew-12 crew members will have a lot of time to do that handover. There’s actually not a rush like you might have when you have a certain like, say, two- or three-day handover of crew to crew and trying to get all that information across.”
Crew-12 is targeting an eight-month stay on board into October and Williams won’t be departing with his Soyuz crew until at least the summer.
“The main mitigation is it’s kind of a lot to take in. You’re in a new home,” Contella said. “So Chris will do what he can.”
With Artemis II getting pushed to at least March, Meir is excited to be in space when they finally do go up. Two of the moonbound mission’s crew, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, are astronaut classmates of Meir. And Meir and Koch joined forces for the first all-female spacewalk in history when they were both on board the space station in 2019.
“We are all thrilled about the launch of Artemis. We are very excited to see how this will all play out so we can watch our friends and colleagues go to the moon,” she said. “The really cool part of it is that if we do launch before Artemis, we’ll be on board the International Space Station, and part of their flight plan actually involves a call to the ISS.”
Hathaway said having both Crew-12 and Artemis II’s astronauts prepping at the same time has not been a distraction.
“It’s more about excitement, really. Like these are our friends and colleagues that we watched train, work really hard, get qualified and ready to go to operate this vehicle on their mission to the moon,” he said. “And so it couldn’t be cooler that they’re in quarantine and we’re in quarantine. We’re trying to launch two rockets roughly around the same time. It’s a pretty exciting time to be part of NASA and part of this expanding mission as we go to the moon and beyond.”
The Artemis II astronauts have since been released from quarantine as they await NASA to redo their wet dress rehearsal of the Space Launch System rocket at KSC’s Launch Pad 39-B.
And they’ll get to watch at least four more people get to space before they do.
