The Crew Dragon spacecraft for the NASA-SpaceX Crew-12 mission has arrived at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s pad 40 in Florida on Wednesday. According to NASA, the mission comprising four astronauts is targeted for launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on February 11. The rollout was announced by SpaceX a day after it grounded the Falcon 9 rocket due to a problem with its second stage during a Starlink mission.
Dragon arrives at the hangar at pad 40 ahead of the upcoming Crew-12 launch to the @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/Sq18mdmR39
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 3, 2026
Taking to X, the company stated – “the second stage experienced an off-nominal condition during preparation for the deorbit burn,” after deploying 25 Starlink satellites in orbit. However, it did successfully passivate itself by venting remaining fuel to prevent an explosion.
A deorbit burn is performed, after the stage deploys payloads, to enable it to safely get destroyed in the upper atmosphere. “Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight,” SpaceX wrote.
With Dragon’s rollout, it seems NASA and SpaceX are confident that Falcon 9 will resume operations before Crew-12 launch date.
The NASA-SpaceX Crew-12 mission
The Crew-12 mission include NASA’s Jessica Meir (commander) and Jack Hathaway (pilot), mission specialist Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev – also a mission specialist. Hathaway and Adenot will be flying on their debut space missions whereas Meir and Fedyaev will fly for the second time.
Crew-12 is NASA’s 12th crew rotation mission to the ISS that will be launched by SpaceX. These four members will join the team of three ISS residents who have been managing the orbital lab since January 15. The number of station residents was reduced to three because Crew-11 astronauts left two weeks earlier than planned due to a health issue; it was the first-ever medical evacuation carried out by NASA.
With the Artemis II Moon mission delayed until March, NASA will freely move forward with Crew-12, as was confirmed by the agency’s Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya on Tuesday after the wet dress rehearsal of the SLS rocket.
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