MOSCOW -- An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut boarded a space station 250 miles above Earth on Monday, relieving a three-man crew forced to stay an extra two months in space by the U.S. Columbia tragedy.
Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. flight engineer Edward Lu were greeted with hugs by their three space comrades -- two Americans and one Russian -- after crawling through a hatch into the orbiting station from their Soyuz capsule.
"Everything is fine. The craft has docked with the station. The crew are feeling fine," a Russian mission control official told Reuters by telephone from a control center outside Moscow shortly after docking.
The Soyuz TMA-2, which took them to the International Space Station after blasting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on Saturday, was the first manned space craft launched since the U.S. Columbia shuttle broke up on re-entry on Feb. 1.
The tragedy, in which seven astronauts were killed, led to the grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet and forced the three-man crew to extend their projected return date by about two months.
Until U.S. space authorities have made a final decision on the future of the shuttle program, the Russian Soyuz is the principal lifeline now for the $95 billion, 16-nation station. After briefing the incoming crew, U.S. astronauts Ken Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russia's Nikolai Budarin are due to return to Earth on May 4 on a backup Soyuz -- the first time U.S. astronauts have come home on a Russian vessel.
TV showed the five together giving a thumbs-up sign for success shortly after Malenchenko, 41, and Lu, 39, had boarded. The pair will stay on the station until October.
Beyond the official euphoria over the successful docking, Russian officials made no secret of their persistent concern for the long-term financial future of the ISS if no extra funds are forthcoming from the United States.
"If a concrete program of future financing is not undertaken in the near future, Russia will run up against huge problems in fulfilling the ISS program," Yuri Semyonov, head of RKK Energia, the company responsible for building the Soyuz capsules, told reporters. Crews have been reduced to two from three members in the wake of the Columbia disaster, restricting the scale of scientific experiments that can be conducted on the ISS.
Space officials said the schedule of work planned for Malenchenko and Lu would include medical and biological experiments and monitoring of the Earth's climate.
The pair also brought birthday gifts for Pettit who turned 48 on April 20 and Budarin who will be 50 on Tuesday.
