Meet NASA Astronaut Jessica Watkins, Crew-13 Commander

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is the commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission. This is her second spaceflight. Upon arrival to the International Space Station, she will join Expedition 75, kicking off a long-duration science expedition aboard the orbiting laboratory. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017. The Lafayette, Colorado native, earned an undergraduate degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University, and a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a geologist, she studied the Martian surface and was a member of the Curiosity rover science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Watkins first launched to the space station as a crew member aboard NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission, spending a total of 170 days in space across Expeditions 67/68 in 2022. She is the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft twice.