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.