Cape Canaveral: Four astronauts have arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) after SpaceX’s Crew-13 mission completed a record-fast journey from Earth.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the crew lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11.10am local time (1510 GMT) on Thursday. Around seven hours and 55 minutes later, the Dragon spacecraft Grace docked with the orbiting laboratory.

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NASA said the journey was the fastest by a US spacecraft to reach the ISS. The exact travel time can vary depending on the position of the station and spacecraft at the time of launch.

The new crew- Americans Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Joshua Kutryk and Russian Sergey Teteryatnikov will spend about six months aboard the ISS.

The astronauts entered the station through a pressurised vestibule and greeted colleagues on Earth during a NASA livestream.

“We are so excited to be here. This is truly a special place,” Watkins said. “It's amazing and kind of ironic to think that it's such a short trip to get here because the journey to get here has been long.”

Kutryk said he was proud to represent Canada in space and was looking forward to beginning the mission after getting some sleep.

The Crew-13 launch had originally been scheduled for September but was delayed after a leak was detected aboard the Dragon spacecraft.

The new arrivals are replacing Crew-12 astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The outgoing crew is expected to return to Earth as early as Monday, subject to weather conditions.

For Kutryk, the six-month mission will also be a particularly personal one. His wife is expected to give birth while he is aboard the space station.

The ISS has been continuously occupied for around 25 years and is approaching the end of its operational life. The station is expected to be brought out of orbit around 2030 and guided towards a controlled crash into one of Earth's oceans.

The ISS remains one of the few major areas of continued US-Russian cooperation despite relations between Moscow and Washington deteriorating sharply following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

(AFP)