NASA reported that the launch date of the next crew to the ISS has been moved from February 15 to February 11.
After the emergency evacuation for medical reasons of the Crew-11 crew, only three people remained on the station — one American and two Russians. This necessitated the fastest possible dispatch of a new crew.
A two-week quarantine precedes each flight to minimize the risk of sending a person with a viral illness into space.
Quarantine is a standard procedure that has been in place since the Apollo program: contact with the outside world is strictly limited, and all individuals approaching the astronauts undergo thorough medical screening.
On January 28, 2026, the four members of the Crew-12 crew — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (commander) and Jack Hathaway (pilot), European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — began a two-week quarantine at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The launch of the Crew-12 mission is scheduled on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft using a Falcon 9 rocket from the SLC-40 launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch was initially set for February 15, 2026, or a later date; however, due to the urgent need to reinforce the ISS crew (following the medical evacuation of the previous Crew-11 mission in January 2026), NASA and SpaceX have adjusted the timeline.
Now, the first launch window will open on February 11 at 6:00 AM Eastern Time (13:00 Latvian time), with backup windows on February 12 at 1:38 PM and February 13 at 1:15 PM Latvian time.
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