A Soyuz spacecraft delivered Brazil's first astronaut and a Russian-US crew to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, two days after blasting off from earth.
"The docking was smooth and the crew are now preparing to open the hatches to enter the ISS," a spokesman for mission control, situated outside Moscow, said.
Marcos Pontes, a 43-year-old Brazilian Air Force pilot, had spent the journey hunched inside the capsule with Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams, both off whom are starting a six-month rotation in space.
Dozens of Brazilian, Russian and US space officials at Mission Control watched on a big screen as the outgoing team - American Bill McArthur and Russian Valery Tokarev - welcomed the newcomers aboard.
"Is Marcos alright?" was the first question asked by Tokarev when the hatch was opened. Within seconds, a joyful Pontes could be seen floating in, waving the Brazilian flag.
Pontes, who also packed a Brazilian soccer team shirt, will return to earth in just over a week with the outgoing crew.
Russian spacecraft have been responsible for shipping crew and supplies to the station since NASA grounded its shuttle fleet after failing to fix a technical problem that killed seven astronauts in 2003.
Soyuz rockets have proved safer than the shuttle despite their 1960s heritage.
The departure of the 13th expedition to the ISS on Thursday has been marred by a brief communication glitch soon after the Soyuz blasted off from Baikonur cosmodrome, which Russia leases from ex-Soviet Kazakhstan.
Russian space officials have said that the glitch did not threaten the mission.
But the head of Energia corporation, which builds the Soyuz spacecrafts, said that overloaded communication network created in 1970s will be upgraded using the latest generation of satellites to fully meet the demands of busy traffic to the ISS.
"We are planning to set up the system of receiving information from Yamal satellites in the next three months," Energia general director Nikolai Sevastyanov told a news briefing after the docking.
"The council of chief designers has already made such decision," he added.
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