Crew-13 Reaches Orbit as Gut, Hip and Space-Weather Studies Target Mars Risks

SpaceX launched Crew-13 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:10 am EDT (15:10 UTC) on Thursday, 1 October 2026, according to Ars Technica. Commander Jessica Watkins, a 38-year-old geologist, becomes the first Black woman to command a spacecraft, the same outlet reported. The Guardian wrote that the crew reached orbit after a three-week delay to fix a leaking fuel system in the Dragon capsule, and that the transit to the station was expected to take about eight hours, the fastest yet by a US spacecraft. The crew is small. The stakes are not. Pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov are all first-time flyers.

NASASpaceflight reported on 29 September that the Falcon 9 launch window was instantaneous, that booster B1101 was flying for the third time, and that Dragon Grace docked to the Harmony forward port at 8:00 pm EDT on 1 October. The mission will join Expedition 75 and is scheduled to depart in March 2027.

Once the crew settles in, the research begins. A University of Copenhagen study published on 28 September, based on blood samples from 52 astronauts who spent months aboard the ISS, found that gut bacteria begin fermenting protein more than usual within weeks of arriving in orbit. ScienceDaily reported the finding. The researchers suspect microgravity slows food through the intestine, giving bacteria more time to break down protein, which may explain why constipation is so common in space. That matters beyond digestion. Lars Ove Dragsted, the senior author, said protein fermentation products are often associated with kidney damage, mood effects and reduced focus. On a Mars mission, crews would spend far longer away from Earth's gravity than ISS astronauts do now, and countermeasures may be needed. The ISS has been permanently staffed since 2000, per Ars Technica, and NASA and its partners plan to keep it running through at least 2030.

"We see changes in astronauts' blood samples that indicate that the gut bacteria begin to ferment protein to a greater extent than usual within weeks after the astronauts arrive in space, and this change continues until they are back on Earth," said joint first author Giorgia La Barbera of the University of Copenhagen.

A separate line of work points the same direction. Microsoft Research published a machine learning pipeline on 30 September that forecasts space-weather risk across 66,935 substations in the continental United States, combining solar-wind data, Auroral Electrojet and Disturbance Storm Time forecasts, local geology and grid infrastructure. The system detected nearly 80% of major space-weather events during its evaluation period and can warn grid operators 30 to 60 minutes ahead, according to the blog post. The May 2024 geomagnetic storm, which degraded GPS and satellite operations, is the reference case.

Hardware, funding and the long run to Mars

Space weather is not the only risk being priced. A 1 October report from TechCrunch described Google's Project Suncatcher, whose first prototype satellite, built by Planet Labs, launched on a SpaceX rocket from California the same day. The satellite will fire a Google Tensor Processing Unit in 15-minute bursts to avoid straining power and thermal systems, and Google also released a peer-reviewed white paper on orbital data centers, to be published in Joule. The paper assumes SpaceX achieves launch prices near $200 per kilogram by 2035, based on a roughly 20% annual cost reduction since the Falcon 1, though the authors stress it is not an economic feasibility study. Satlyt, a Sunnyvale and Nairobi company founded by former Google and SpaceX product manager Rama Afullo, raised an $8 million seed round and flew its software on the same launch, TechCrunch reported on 1 October. Afullo told the outlet that Satlyt deployed Google DeepMind's Gemma model on a Momentus spacecraft earlier this year, cutting the size of one transmission about onboard software errors by more than 60%. The company's customers on this mission include NASA, Stellerian and TakeMe2Space. The claim that NASA is paying Satlyt to test cloud computing protocols in space comes from TechCrunch's interview with Afullo.

Other money is moving toward medicine. Varda raised a $251 million Series D to advance pharmaceutical manufacturing in space, Endpoints News reported on 30 September. The same day, SpaceNews reported that Quantum Space signed a launch processing work order with All Points Logistics for its Prime mission, targeting the second half of 2027 from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Blackswan Space closed a €2.5 million round led by Iron Wolf Capital, bringing total funding to €3.2 million, Tech.eu reported on 30 September; its RPO Kit is planned for orbit in 2027.

Europe's supply chain problem, and a widening launch market

The science results land as Europe worries about the hardware underneath them. At the Pretzl Connect 2026 press event in Budapest, Kate Underhill, future space transportation propulsion architect at ESA, told EE Times that space systems typically operate "at least 10 years behind consumer electronics." She described an ESA attempt to order 20 laser diodes from a German supplier that required a minimum order of 10,000 units. Underhill also said European satellite developers face US International Traffic in Arms Regulations compliance whenever a US component is on board, a constraint that has kept ITAR-free satellite efforts difficult. Launch demand is not slowing. World Space Week 2026 opens on 4 October in 100 nations with the theme "Rocket Revolution," SpaceNews reported, citing 50,000 events in 102 countries last year. Separately, Agile Space Industries said Jason Wright will join as President in early October; the company expects to reach roughly five times its 2022 revenue by the end of 2026 and employs more than 165 people. And Galileo Space, a SpaceNews profile noted on 1 October, is in final stages of securing its first government contract, with a demonstration satellite scheduled for Q4 2027.

The human side remains the point. Kutryk and his wife Heather are expecting their third child in late November, while he is in orbit. "Leaving these three (plus one on the way) is the hardest thing I've ever done. But that has always been the nature of exploration," he wrote on X, as quoted by Ars Technica.

NASA manager Dana Weigel said on the eve of liftoff that the agency would do its best to keep Kutryk looped in to his family, according to The Guardian. It has been done before: Randy Bresnik dialed in from orbit in 2009, and in 2004 NASA linked astronaut Mike Fincke to his wife's delivery room. The difference now is that the science is starting to explain what six months in microgravity does to the body, one blood sample at a time.