Shubhanshu Shukla, three other astronauts enter ISS

India's Shubhanshu Shukla and three other astronauts entered the International Space Station (ISS) to warm hugs and handshakes on Thursday as the Dragon spacecraft docked to the orbital laboratory after a 28-hour journey around Earth.

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The new spacecraft -- fifth in the Dragon series, named Grace -- achieved a soft capture with the Harmony module of the space station at 4:01 pm IST over the North Atlantic Ocean and it took another two hours to establish communication, power links and pressure stabilisation.

This is the first time an Indian astronaut has travelled to the ISS.

"The #Ax4 crew -- commander Peggy Whitson, ISRO astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, ESA astronaut Sławosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, and mission specialist Tibor Kapu -- emerges from the Dragon spacecraft and gets their first look at their home in low Earth orbit," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a post on X.

"We are happy to be here. It was a long quarantine," Whitson, who is on her fifth spaceflight, said as the four astronauts waved to the mission control at Houston.