The Russian spacecraft Soyuz TMA-09M chased down the International Space Station in record time, the crew located the station in orbit and arrived there in less than six hours, Computerworld reported.
The crew consisted of Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin who controlled the ship, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and shuttle veteran Karen Nyberg, according to CBS News.
The capsule took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:31 p.m. EST and docked at 11:10 p.m., Computerworld reported.
In the past, it's taken NASA's space shuttle fleet, as well as, the Soyuz about two days to reach the Space Station.
This is the second accelerated trip to the station, but Tuesday's trip made it there six minutes quicker, breaking the record of fastest mission.
"Thank you for the excellent space work," an unidentified woman from Mission Control Moscow told the astronauts after they had docked in the space station. "My congratulations to all of you... It's not just us. It's all of us. You're the ones in the frontier."
The hatches opened at 12:55 p.m. and the three astronauts were greeted by NASA's Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy, Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, who were already onboard the space station.
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Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin will remain at the space station until September.
"I'm so happy that you feel really at home," Yurchikhin's wife, Larisa Anatolievna Yurchikhina, told her husband during a post-docking video session. "I love you so very much, my dear."
"I'd like to say to you, you're the greatest girl in the world, and I love you so very much. And this is for everybody to hear," Yurchin replied, according to CBS News.
The six astronauts now in the Space Station will make up Expedition 36; they plan to conduct various experiments over the next few months. They will evaluate ways to prevent bone density loss on long missions, study how plants grow which could potentially allow astronauts to grow their own food in space, and observe how fire behaves in the Space Station environment, Computerworld reported.
