New Delhi: The Axiom-4 crew, including Shubhanshu Shukla, received a warm welcome with hugs and celebratory drinks as they entered the International Space Station on Thursday. The newly launched spacecraft, Grace – the fifth in the Dragon series – successfully completed a soft docking with the International Space Station at 16:01 while orbiting over the North Atlantic Ocean. “At 6:31 am EDT (4:01 IST) on Thursday, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station for the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced in a statement. After the spacecraft’s soft docking, a secure connection – known as hard-mating – was established as 12 sets of hooks locked the two orbiting structures together, allowing power and communication links to be activated. Hatch-opening procedures took about two hours to complete before the astronauts could enter the space station. Shubhanshu Shukla has become the second Indian to travel to space, following Rakesh Sharma’s historic mission in 1984. He is joined on the Axiom-4 mission by Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, the second Polish astronaut since 1978, and Tibor Kapu, who becomes the second Hungarian in space after a 45-year hiatus. The crew launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday.