An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut boarded a space station 410 km (250 miles) above earth today, relieving a three-man crew forced to stay an extra two months in space by the US Columbia tragedy.
Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko and US flight engineer Edward Lu were greeted with hugs by their three space comrades - two Americans and one Russian - after crawling through a hatch into the orbiting station from their Soyuz capsule.
"Everything is fine. The craft has docked with the station. The crew are feeling fine," a Russian mission control official told Reuters by telephone from a control centre outside Moscow shortly after docking.
The Soyuz TMA-2, which took them to the International Space Station after blasting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on Saturday, was the first manned space craft launched since the US Columbia shuttle broke up on re-entry on February 1. The tragedy, in which seven astronauts were killed, led to the grounding of the US shuttle fleet and forced the three-man crew to extend their projected return date by about two months.
Until US space authorities have made a final decision on the future of the shuttle programme, the Russian Soyuz is the principal life-line now for the $95 billion, 16-nation station.