A University of North Florida engineering graduate is trading a career flying combat missions and test aircraft for a seat aboard a rocket bound for the International Space Station. Luke Delaney, who grew up near DeBary, Florida, and attended Deltona High School, is set to pilot NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission when it launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station next month.
Crew-13 is targeted to lift off no earlier than September 12 at 6:30 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40, riding a Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon spacecraft named Grace, according to Spaceflight Now. Delaney's road to that launch pad runs straight through Jacksonville, where Action News Jax reports the astronaut earned a mechanical engineering degree at the University of North Florida in 2006 after enlisting in the Marine Corps as a flight navigator years earlier.
Delaney will fly as pilot alongside NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins as commander, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, who will serve as mission specialists for Expeditions 75 and 76, according to NASA. The mission carries a pair of milestones beyond Delaney's own journey: Watkins is set to become the first NASA astronaut to fly twice on Crew Dragon, while Kutryk will be the first Canadian astronaut to fly under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, per BASENOR.
From Enlisted Navigator to Combat Veteran
Before he ever considered a career in space, Delaney enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1998 as a KC-130 aerial navigator, deploying to Afghanistan in December 2001 attached to Task Force 58 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, according to NASA. He was later selected for the Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning Education Program, which sent him to UNF to earn his degree. Per Action News Jax, Delaney went on to fly more than 400 combat sorties across a 22-year career as a naval aviator, logging more than 3,900 hours of flight time in 48 different aircraft models and flying missions across the Asia Pacific region.
That career also included work as a test pilot and instructor evaluating advanced weapon systems, the station reports. Delaney graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 2014 and earned a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 2016, according to the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation. After retiring from the Marine Corps in 2020, he worked as a research pilot and aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, flying airborne science missions to collect atmospheric data on climate change, per WOKV.
A Jacksonville Detour Into Pool Cue Physics
Delaney's time at UNF included an unusual detour: an engineering internship at Jacksonville pool cue manufacturer Predator, where he applied momentum equations and fluid dynamics to optimize energy transfer in high-performance cue designs, according to the University of North Florida. Action News Jax notes that Delaney also helped run the ROTC program at Jacksonville University and, along with his wife Tracy Delaney, who earned a bachelor's degree in education at UNF, has said their two daughters were young while the family attended UNF and enjoyed adventures on campus. The station also reports Delaney has recalled watching rockets launch from Cape Canaveral, a memory that now bookends a career bringing him back to that same coastline as a pilot rather than a spectator.
Delaney's selection into NASA's astronaut corps came through Group 23, the 2021 candidate class chosen from a pool of more than 12,000 applicants. It marked NASA's first candidate class in four years and its first to require a STEM master's degree of applicants, underscoring how competitive the path into the astronaut corps has become. He and his nine classmates completed two years of basic astronaut candidate training before officially graduating in a ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston on March 5, 2024.
Six Months of Spacewalks and Experiments
Once aboard the space station, Delaney is scheduled for a six-month stay that will include extravehicular activities, or spacewalks, to conduct orbital maintenance, according to News4JAX. Action News Jax reports he will also carry out scientific investigations and technology demonstrations as part of preparations for future missions to the moon and Mars.
Hoodline previously reported on the Crew-13 timeline shift in a piece on Space Coast launch traffic, and more recently covered a Falcon 9 booster's 18th flight carrying Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral. Launch dates for ISS crew rotations remain subject to change based on weather, vehicle processing and space station traffic, so the September 12 target could still shift as the date approaches.
