The NASA-SpaceX Crew-12 mission has been delayed again due to unfavourable weather. SpaceX announced on Wednesday that the mission is now targeted for launch no earlier than 3:45 am IST on Friday (February 13). Four astronauts are preparing to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) and they will board the Dragon spacecraft mounted atop the Falcon 9 rocket.
The launch has been delayed this time due to elevated winds in the ascent corridor in Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Earlier on February 9, NASA had postponed the launch from February 11 due to bad weather conditions around the launch site.
Now targeting no earlier than Friday, February 13 for Falcon 9’s launch of @NASA‘s Crew-12 due to elevated winds in the ascent corridor. Teams will continue to monitor weather → https://t.co/RURjWg7R8P
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 10, 2026
The NASA-SpaceX Crew-12 mission
Crew-12 includes NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev and the European Space Agency’s Sophie Adenot. This will mark the first spaceflight mission for Hathaway and Adenot and second for Meir and Fedyaev.
They will be joining the ‘skeleton crew’ of three residents onboard the orbital lab who are managing station operations since mid-January after the early exit of Crew-11 astronauts owing to a medical issue with one of the members. With Crew-12’s arrival, the number of ISS residents will return to seven.
The four astronauts will spend eight months in space and conduct several experiments to advance research that would aid future Moon and Mars missions. NASA says these research activities include studying pneumonia-causing bacteria to improve treatments, on-demand intravenous fluid generation, automated plant health monitoring, enhancement of food production in space, and effect of spaceflight on blood flow.
Awaiting Crew-12 are NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev who launched to the ISS in November 2025. They are scheduled to depart from the station after a Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA’s Anil Menon with Russia’s Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina arrive in July.
According to SpaceX, the Dragon spacecraft flying the four-person Crew-12 team has previously supported Crew-4 and Crew-9 missions as well as private Axiom Space missions Ax-2 and Ax-3 to and from the space station.
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