Rookie astronaut Luke Delaney, who was raised in Central Florida, tried to temper his excitement for the potential to go on a spacewalk during his upcoming stay on board the International Space Station.
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“Definitely won’t be make or break for a mission,” he said during a Crew-13 media briefing Monday. “Just launching with a crew like this and working as an expedition on board, whatever gets thrown at us is going to be exciting and totally successful in my mind, no matter what the outcome is. So, spacewalk, yes, that would be awesome, but not required if it’s not in the cards for some reason.”
Tapped to be pilot of the upcoming mission, he’ll be flying alongside commander and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos costmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
The quartet will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 in the Crew Dragon Grace from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 no earlier than Sept. 12, set to relieve Crew-12, which has been aboard the space station since February.
Delaney, 46, was born in Miami but raised in DeBary and attended both DeLand and Deltona High School in Volusia.
He’s expected to fly back to Central Florida later this week at Kennedy Space Center where he and his crewmates will get to climb into the Crew Dragon, which debuted last year on the Axiom 4 mission and will be making its second trip to space.
Richard Jones, NASA’s deputy director for the Commercial Crew Office and LEO program called it a “Dragon test drive.”
“That’s when the crew will be getting into their ascent entry suits, getting into the vehicle,” he said. “It’s their chance to build some muscle memory, get some familiarity with the vehicle. … So it’s just a very big psychological boost.”
Only Watkins had flown to space having been a member of Crew-4 in 2022. She said she’s grateful to have Delaney on board, who was chosen as part the 2021 class of astronauts and was known by his classmates as “Mr. Reliable.”
“I had not heard that, but it definitely tracks,” Watkins said. “He absolutely is always backing me up, both technically and you know with the interpersonal side of our team skills, making sure that everybody has what they need to be as successful as they can. So I certainly appreciate everything that Florida put into Luke to make him who he is today.
Delaney said training for the spacewalks, if they happen, has been the most interesting part of training for the mission, spending hours in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston to simulate movement in outer space.
“Spacewalk training is by far for me one of the most unique environments that we operate in, and as good as that training is, and as closely as that can mirror the environment we’re going to be working in, you still have to put in a lot of homework and a lot of just thoughtfulness and how you operate in the pool,” he said.
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins (center) assists CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Josh Kutryk (left) and NASA astronaut Luke Delaney (right) as they practice suiting up in spacesuits in an International Space Station airlock simulator at Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Space Vehicle Mockup Facility in Houston, Texas. Astronauts familiarize themselves with spacesuit systems and procedures and practice Quest airlock operations before conducting spacewalk training at JSC’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in simulated microgravity. (Josh Valcarcel/NASA)
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins (left) assists CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Josh Kutryk (background) and NASA astronaut Luke Delaney (right) as they practice suiting up in spacesuits in an International Space Station airlock simulator at Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Space Vehicle Mockup Facility in Houston, Texas. Astronauts familiarize themselves with spacesuit systems and procedures and practice Quest airlock operations before conducting spacewalk training at JSC’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in simulated microgravity. (Josh Valcarcel/NASA)
He’s curious to see if the training mirrors reality.
“As a non-spacewalker so far, I’ll see how that has worked out,” he said. “But to me, just that thought exercise of going through that training in the NBL and kind of extrapolating that to what it’s going to be like on orbit has been a really fun experience.”
While Crew-13 will be his first taste of space, he isn’t shying away from the potential for a lunar mission.
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“Moon mission — I think everybody at this table would say yes to that,” he said. “I am no different from the rest of the crew when it comes to looking at future opportunities there.”
NASA astronaut and SpaceX Crew‑13 pilot Luke Delaney sits inside a Dragon spacecraft mockup while tapping a cockpit screen interface during a preflight training session at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California on June 8, 2026. (Courtesy/SpaceX)
The SpaceX Crew-13 members pose for a portrait in their pressure suits during a preflight training session at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. From left are, Roscosmos Sergey Teteryatnikov, NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk. (Courtesy/SpaceX)
NASA astronaut and SpaceX Crew‑13 pilot Luke Delaney sits inside a Dragon spacecraft mockup while tapping a cockpit screen interface during a preflight training session at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California on June 8, 2026. (Courtesy/SpaceX)
He was one of 10 NASA astronaut candidates, along with two international candidates from the United Arab Emirates, chosen as members of the 23rd astronaut group from among 12,000 applicants.
They graduated to active astronaut status in March 2024, and have been dubbed “The Flies,” which is a name chosen by the astronaut class that preceded them.
Theirs was the first NASA class to require its candidates to have at least a master’s degree in a STEM-oriented field.
Delaney, who’s retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of North Florida and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Delaney would be the fifth “Fly” to make it to space, including Anil Menon, who arrived last month on board a Soyuz, and Jack Hathaway, who is part of Crew-12.
One of his classmates, Deniz Burnham, was recently announced to fly up to the station on a Soyuz as early as next March.
“It’s really exciting to see the class fly, no matter where you’re at in the in the sequence,” he said.
He’s worked closely with both Menon and Burnham during training, he said, and they follow in classmate Chris Williams’ footsteps as part of the astronauts flying to the station with Russian crewmates from Kazakhstan.
“It’s really just satisfying, I think, to see everybody coming together and joining up on orbit at some level, taking all those years of training and putting them forward into being good stewards of the station,” he said.
Crew-13 is slated to be about a six-month mission that would be relieved in March by Crew-14, but Delaney is hoping he and Burnham get to cross paths in space.
“She’s super excited about getting up there, and maybe I’m slightly hoping we get delayed a little bit so we have some overlaps that way we can have three Flies back to back,” he said.
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