By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – Four NASA astronauts arrived on the International Space Station Thursday. They docked with their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and the orbiting laboratory in order to embark on a six month science mission.

After a series of weather problems that delayed the launch for nearly a week, the rendezvous took place 21 hours later.

NASA reports that the docking took about 6:30 p.m. ET (2330 GMT) as the Crew Dragon vehicle Endurance and the space station were approximately flying about 260 miles (420km) above the eastern Caribbean Sea.

The American NASA astronauts who make up the Endurance team are flight commander Raja Chari (44), Tom Marshburn (61), and Kayla Baron (34), both mission specialists from NASA. Matthias Maurer (51) is a German space agency mission specialist.

The crew arrived at the station and took stock of the cargo, performed standard leak checks, and then pressurized both the spacecraft’s interior and exterior to prepare for the opening of the hatch.

NASA live video from the station shows the arrivals floating through the padded passageway that leads from their capsule to the orbiting post.

They were greeted by Oleg Novitskiy, Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, and Oleg Novitskiy, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. The trio shared a Soyuz flight to the station with their Roscosmos counterparts.

ASTRONAUT WIGS

Marshburn is Endeavor’s second in command. He is a physician and ex-NASA flight surgeon. Marshburn has also been on two previous spaceflights, one to the station, and four spacewalks.

Maurer, a material science engineer was making his spaceflight debut, along with Chari (a U.S. Air Force combat pilot and fighter jet) and Barron (a U.S. Navy sub officer and nuclear engineer). Marshburn attached astronaut wings to his rookie crewmates shortly after he arrived aboard. This was followed by handshakes, smiles, and a lot of laughter.

Barron and Chari were also selected from the initial 18 astronauts for NASA’s Artemis missions. They are aimed to return humans to the Moon later in this decade than the Apollo lunar program.

Chari made a few remarks during the welcome ceremony, which was broadcast live from the station. “I think everyone loved the ride up this,” she said. It was much smoother than what we had hoped.

NASA reported that SpaceX Dragon had also shipped more than 4,800 pounds (1,800kg) of hardware and equipment.

After a May 2020 test flight with two astronauts, NASA and SpaceX officially named Thursday’s crew “Crew 3”. This crew was the third “operational” space crew NASA and SpaceX had flown to the station.

Crew 2 returned to Earth safely from space on Monday, with a splashdown at the Gulf of Mexico in Florida. This marked the end of a record-breaking 199 day in orbit.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk (NASDAQ:) Inc), a billionaire who also created Tesla’s electric car company. It has flown 15 humans to space in just 17 months. This includes its astrotourism launch in September, which saw the first civilian crew send to Earth orbit.

Since November 2000, the space station has been continuously occupied by five international space agencies operating from fifteen countries.

A minimum of seven international crew members live and work on the platform, traveling approximately 5 miles per second. They orbit Earth around every 90 minutes.