Chris Hadfield and crew enter International Space Station

The Russian space capsule carrying Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and two colleagues docked with the International Space Station on Friday morning.

The spacecraft carrying Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko linked up with the space station's Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m. ET after spending two days in orbit

The docking took place around 410 kilometres above their point of origin, the Baikonur space port in southern Kazakhstan.

The trio will join NASA astronaut Cmdr. Kevin Ford and flight engineers and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who have been residing at the orbital laboratory since Oct. 26.

A welcome ceremony began once the hatch opened at 11:37 a.m. ET Friday, 2 hours after the shuttle docked with the space station.

Hadfield was the first to float through the hatch. The new trio exchanged hugs and greetings with the existing crew upon entering the station, then fielded congratulatory calls from family and Mission Control officials.

"It's like going up to an attic and discovering a treasure you've forgotten about," said Hadfield on the phone with his family. "It's just magic."

Each newcomer spoke to members of their families from Mission Control in Moscow. Marshburn's daughter asked him to do a flip in the zero-gravity space station, which he did, much to the amusement of the audience in Moscow and the new crew.

Hadfield's son commented that his father's face was puffy and wondered if it was from smiling too much.

"Yeah, we've been smiling a lot," Hadfield said. "It was just a heck of a ride for the three of us. It's like being on a crazy dragster."

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Chris Hadfield and crew enter International Space Station