SpaceX Crew-12 docks, restores International Space Station to seven

A Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Saturday, restoring the outpost to its normal seven-person complement after about a month operating with a skeleton crew following an earlier medical evacuation.

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, Feb. 13, at about 5:15–5:17 a.m. Eastern time. The capsule, identified in mission notices as Crew Dragon Freedom, spent more than 30 hours in free flight and approached the station for a Valentine’s Day docking at 3:15 p.m. EST on Saturday, Feb. 14. It attached to the space-facing port of the lab’s forward Harmony module; hatches opened roughly two hours later and the newcomers floated into the station for a brief welcome ceremony.

Commander Jessica Meir, returning for her second long-duration stay, radioed on arrival, “Grateful to be on board, and we’re ready to get to work.” Meir later reflected on the multinational crew, saying, “It is so wonderful to be back up here...You look around, the crew up here, and it's really a testament to everything we do, we have so many countries represented, so many backgrounds, so many disciplines, we are so excited to be here.” Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, one of three crew members who had kept the station running during the understaffed interval, greeted the newcomers: “Welcome to Crew 12. We are happy they all arrived safe and sound, we’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time. We’re really happy and proud to work as a team here.” European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot described the ride and the view of Earth, saying, “SpaceX gave the crew ‘quite a ride, very fun!’” and “The first time we looked at the Earth was, wow, mind blowing. The Earth is so beautiful from up (here). We see no lines, no borders, it was a very big moment for us, for Jack and me, to see that for the first time.”

The Crew-12 manifest included two NASA astronauts, commander Meir and pilot Jack Hathaway, one ESA astronaut from France, Sophie Adenot, and veteran Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They are slated to spend roughly eight months aboard Expedition 74, conducting scientific experiments and station maintenance. Planned research tasks include ultrasound scans of blood vessels to study circulation changes, pharmaceutical studies related to bacteria that cause pneumonia, and a simulated lunar landing experiment to probe how abrupt gravity changes affect the human body and cognition.

The arrival relieves operational constraints imposed after one Crew-11 member returned to Earth early last month for medical reasons, an event that briefly left the station with just three occupants. While a crew of three can safely operate the outpost, managers curtailed research activities and paused spacewalks because tasks such as extravehicular work require two-person teams. NASA managers had explored moving the Crew-12 launch forward by several days to reduce the period when U.S. segment systems would be handled by a single U.S. astronaut.

The mission also highlighted evolving launch-site logistics. Falcon 9’s first stage made a landing at SpaceX’s new Landing Zone 40 the same morning, marking continued use of Space Launch Complex-40 for crewed flights in addition to the adjacent historic pad. The station, orbiting roughly 250 miles or 400 kilometers above Earth, now resumes a fuller research tempo as the new team settles in.