Online Desk : A new international crew arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday after a swift 15-hour flight aboard a SpaceX capsule launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

The fresh team — NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui, and Russia’s Oleg Platonov — will spend at least six months aboard the orbiting laboratory, replacing the crew that has been in space since March. The returning astronauts are expected to head back to Earth as early as Wednesday.

Fincke greeted the station with a cheerful “Hello, space station!” as the capsule docked high above the South Pacific. Cardman later described the approach as “an unbelievably beautiful sight.”

All four astronauts had initially trained for different missions. Cardman had been reassigned from a previous SpaceX launch to make room for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been aboard the station for over nine months due to delays with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Fincke and Yui, originally slated for the next Starliner flight, transitioned to SpaceX after ongoing issues grounded Starliner until at least 2026. Platonov, meanwhile, had been dropped from a Soyuz flight a few years ago due to an undisclosed illness.

With their arrival, the ISS’s temporary population has risen to 11 crew members. Despite the quick journey, the record for the fastest trip to the ISS still belongs to Russia, with a three-hour flight.