Four astronauts docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday after a flight of about eight hours, the fastest trip to the orbiting laboratory by any US spacecraft. The SpaceX Dragon capsule, named Grace, lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 11:10am local time (1510 GMT) and docked seven hours and 55 minutes later. The previous crew to launch from American soil needed more than 30 hours to arrive.

The mission, known as Crew-13, is commanded by NASA's Jessica Watkins, who became the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit. A geologist who worked on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity a decade ago, Watkins is making her second trip to the station after a long stay in 2022. The other crew members are all first-time space travellers: NASA's Luke Delaney, a retired Marine; Joshua Kutryk of Canada, a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force; and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Russia, a former submariner. They will replace four astronauts who have been aboard since February and will stay for about six months, conducting experiments and research meant to support future missions to the Moon and Mars, according to NASA.

The launch was originally planned for mid-September but was delayed by three weeks to fix a leaking fuel system in the Dragon's propulsion system, which involved replacing a valve. Thick clouds threatened to halt the countdown on launch day, but skies cleared enough for a safe liftoff. The duration of such journeys depends largely on the distance between the station and the spacecraft at launch, which helps explain the dramatic variation in travel times. "Thanks for an amazing ride," Watkins radioed after reaching orbit. Once aboard, she said it was ironic that the trip was so short "because the journey to get here has been long."

The number 13 featured prominently. This was the 13th crew SpaceX has launched for NASA, not counting a 2020 test flight, and the mission patch pays homage to Apollo 13, the 1970 Moon mission that ended with its astronauts returning safely despite a serious in-flight emergency. The crew rode to the pad in black Teslas with "Lucky 13" plates and carried a small crocheted golden dragon named Lucky. "We figured it wouldn't hurt to bring a little of our own luck just in case, but clearly we don't need it," Watkins said.

For Kutryk, the mission has a personal dimension. His wife, Heather, is due to give birth to their third child in late November, making him the fourth man to become a father while in orbit. NASA manager Dana Weigel said that "a lot of life-changing things can happen over six months" and that the agency would try to keep him connected to his family; the Canadian Space Agency has also promised support. There is precedent: in 2004 NASA set up a radio link between astronaut Mike Fincke and his wife's delivery room, while Austrian astronaut Franz Viehböck was not told of his daughter's birth until the day after his 1991 launch to the Soviet Union's Mir station.

The flight is part of a busy week for SpaceX. Three hours after the crew launched, a Falcon rocket carried more than 100 small satellites from California, and another was scheduled to lift off from Florida with a classified satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office. The same week, the company's giant Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time.