Joshua Kutryk, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, is going to the International Space Station with a pocket watch that has been in his family for more than 100 years. A fourth-generation Ukrainian Canadian, he describes the timepiece as both a useful tool and a family heirloom that keeps him mindful of how far his family and the world have traveled.
During a prelaunch news conference in August, Kutryk explained that he relies on a watch to mark the hours, while also noting that it has been passed down through his family from the very first generation. The device does little more than keep track of time, yet it bears a long history within his household.
The Watch and the Family Story
The watch serves as a prompt for Kutryk to consider how much has changed since the last century began, he said.
“For me, it’s really neat to look at that and reflect on just how much has changed in those 100 years, a little over 100 years,” he said. “If that’s how much change in the last hundred years, how much more could change if we do things right in the next hundred?”
The gap between the Wright Brothers’ first flight and the first human landing on the moon is a mere 66 years, he observed. That same watch has moved from generation to generation within his family.
The watch is scheduled to fly on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, carried by the Falcon 9 rocket. Along with it, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 will send three other crew members to orbit: NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
The Science Agenda
A broad scientific agenda accompanies the Crew-13 mission. NASA reports that the astronauts will aid investigators who study human stem-cell-derived tissues to develop treatments for:
- Heart disease
- Parkinson’s disease
This mission aims to examine crop growth, a factor that matters greatly for longer space voyages. The crew will assist researchers in learning more about how blood flows change during time spent in orbit. They will also put new medical tools through their paces for keeping track of the crew’s health.
This mission falls under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The spacecraft will reach the station in under 8 hours, and if the launch stays on schedule, NASA says it will mark the quickest journey to the ISS in history.
The Fastest Trip to the Station
SpaceX’s vice president for Build and Flight Reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier, was asked to explain the reasoning behind the trip’s speed.
“The angle separation between space station and Dragon is very, very close, and that’s just essentially orbital mechanics that got us in the right place,” he said during a prelaunch news conference on Wednesday. “There was a recent orbit adjustment maneuver done by space station, and that kind of set things up, and we just kind of got lucky that they line up and work out extremely well.”
The spacecraft is set to dock at roughly 7 p.m. ET, with the station’s airlock opening within a span of under two hours. The arriving crew will then link up with Expedition 75, a group that already has three astronauts aboard the orbiting outpost.
The Handover and the Return
Crew-13’s arrival signals a swift handover. The new occupants will take over for Crew-12, who have called the station home since February.
Lori Glaze, NASA’s associate administrator for the Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, said during Wednesday’s news conference that the Crew-13 team will quickly get acclimated and conduct a relatively short handover with the outgoing crew preparing to return home early next week.
Human crews will remain aboard the station for another 6 months. November will mark the 26th year of uninterrupted human presence aboard the facility. Over that span, more than 280 astronauts from 26 countries and the station’s five international partners have lived and worked there.
Weather and the Mechanical Issues
NASA’s launch window opens at 11:10 a.m. ET on Thursday from Space Launch Complex 40, located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Weather conditions are currently favorable, though officials note there remains a 45% probability that the mission could be delayed due to dense cloud cover and precipitation near the launch pad.
In August, the Crew-13 launch was put off due to a mechanical problem with the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system, discovered during environmental checks. Gerstenmaier said SpaceX also troubleshot unexpected problems with the vehicle’, which involved an oxidizer leak in its GPS and a rocket engine motor microcontroller.
On Wednesday afternoon, after a Launch Readiness Review, NASA and SpaceX announced that they were “go for launch.”.
“The spaceflight gave us some surprises here,” said Gerstenmaier. “But the absolute number one priority for us is to get the crew safely to orbit. We will continue to look at data. We will continue to review information. We’ll look back through past records. We’ll make sure everything is right, and when we’re ready to go fly, we’ll go fly.”
What the Station Means
The anniversary was presented by Glaze as a way to recall what the station has brought forth.
“The space station, as you know, is approaching 26 years of continuous operations, where research and technology demonstrations continue to benefit people here on Earth,” she said. “They strengthen our U.S. leadership in space and ensure that we’re ready for sustained human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.”
Crew-13 is set to expand the record for time spent in orbit. Its science program covers disease treatment, crop production, and medical monitoring — areas where previous space research has already suggested real potential.
The watch is merely a fragment of that larger narrative. The century-long saga of Kutryk’s family history is now being carried toward a destination where humanity has devoted many years to establishing a lasting presence in orbit.
Thursday morning marks the opening of the launch window. Assuming the weather plays along, the crew will be departing within hours, setting off on a voyage toward the highest point humanity has ever reached.
Source material: “NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 astronaut bringing 100-year-old heirloom on space station trip,” ABC13 Houston.
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