The Soyuz TMA-3 craft, manned by American Michael Foale, Russian Alexander Kaleri and Spaniard Pedro Duque, docked at 0711 GMT.

The successful docking manoeuvre met with a burst of applause and smiles among officials at the Russian space flight control centre outside Moscow, where images of the docking were clearly visible on television screens.

After opening the hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS, the crew were due to make their way into the station at around 1025 GMT.

The vessel had blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday to relieve a US-Russian crew that has been there for six months.

The take-off came three days after the successful launch of the first manned spaceship by China, propelling it into the elite club of countries with manned space programmes alongside Russia and the United States.

The mission is seen as a boost for the European space program, as it is the first space flight for a European astronaut to the ISS since the disintegration of the American space shuttle Columbia on February 1.

Russia has been the only country servicing the ISS since the United States grounded its shuttle program following the breakup of its Columbia spacecraft as it returned to earth from the station.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, director of the European Space Agency (ESA), said that despite the technical problems encountered after the Columbia disaster "the activities on the ISS continue thanks to the Russians who permit us to have access to the station while we await the return to operation of the shuttle".

Foale and Kaleri, members of the eighth permanent ISS mission, are replacing another US-Russian crew, Edward Lu and Yuri Malenchenko, who have been on the ISS for six months. They will stay onboard the space station until April 2004.

Duque had been scheduled to fly to the ISS in April for an eight-day stay to carry out a range of scientific experiments, but he was bumped off the Russian flight after it was commandeered to take up a replacement crew for the

One of the objectives of the eighth permanent mission is to prepare the station for the arrival of a European supply spaceship, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, whose first flight to the ISS is scheduled for September next year.

Duque, whose 10-day mission is supported by the Spanish ministry of science and technology, is to carry out 24 experiments in the fields of life and physical sciences, Earth observation, education and technology.

ESA is one of the main partners along with Russia and the United States in the 16-nation ISS project.

A member of ESA's astronaut corps since 1992, Duque becomes the sixth European, and first Spaniard, to visit and work on the International Space Station. He flew once before to space on a US shuttle in 1998.

Duque will land on October 28 in a Soyuz capsule with Malenchenko and Lu in Kazakhstan.

SPACE.WIRE