Four new crew members, including two from the United States, received a warm welcome after arriving at the International Space Station on Saturday.

The spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fezyaev, docked at 3:16 p.m. ET.

“Everyone arrived safely. We have been waiting for this moment for a long time,” said Sergei Kud Sverchkov, who was already on board as part of the Russian Federation’s Roscosmos crew.

The spacecraft, named Dragon, was propelled into orbit by a SpaceX rocket early Friday morning.

“We’re very excited to be here and get to work,” Meir said after greeting the space station’s small crew. “We made it. We’re here. We love you.”

Speaking later, Adenot said she enjoyed the trip.

“It was quite a ride, but it was a lot of fun,” she said. “When I first saw the Earth, I was amazed. The Earth from above is so beautiful, you literally can’t see any lines or borders.”

They arrive at an unusually quiet orbital laboratory.

The four were originally scheduled to overlap in space with the departing crew on a mission known as Crew 11. However, the group had to return to Earth early due to medical problems. (NASA did not reveal the identity of the affected astronauts or the nature of the incident for privacy reasons.)

The Crew-11 astronauts departed on January 14, leaving one NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two Russian cosmonauts Kudo Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev on the International Space Station.

Together, the four new arrivals will be known as Crew 12, bringing the standard occupancy of the space station to seven.

“Just floating, it’s a really cool experience,” Hathaway said after greeting passengers. “It was a great journey with some great friends from Crew-12.”

The crew took off from the top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. 5:15 a.m. ET on Friday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

NASA delayed the launch by two days due to strong winds along the flight path earlier this week. The agency regularly monitors weather conditions along the rocket’s flight path in case an emergency occurs during the ascent and the Dragon capsule carrying astronauts needs to be separated from the rocket and landed along the East Coast.

The recent Falcon 9 accident, which occurred during an unmanned mission to deploy SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, prompted NASA officials to review the company’s findings before launching.

Following the Feb. 2 incident, SpaceX suspended launches while the company and the Federal Aviation Administration investigated the matter. A few days later, the FAA cleared SpaceX to resume operations, and subsequent launches successfully deployed Starlink satellites, with the rocket performing as expected.

NASA officials said at a press conference earlier this week that there have been no major problems while the space station is understaffed. Therefore, there was no need to rush the arrival of new crew members.

“We look forward to additional support, but we will launch as soon as we are ready,” Dina Contera, NASA’s deputy director of International Space Station programs at Johnson Space Center, said Monday.

The four new space station crew members are expected to stay at the orbiting outpost for about eight months. During that time, they will conduct scientific experiments such as food production in space, how microgravity affects blood flow in the body, and medical research on bacteria that cause pneumonia, which NASA says will “advance research and technology for future missions to the Moon and Mars, and benefit humans back on Earth.”

The Crew-12 mission is Hathaway and Adenot’s first mission. This will be Fezyaev’s second spaceflight. Meir previously spent 205 days on the space station starting in July 2019. During that time, she and fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch made history by becoming NASA’s first all-female spacewalk when they were assigned to NASA’s Artemis II lunar orbit, scheduled to launch in March.

Meir on Saturday expressed surprise at the collaboration that has made the space station a beacon for humanity.

“This is a promise of five nations, supported by trust and partnership and powered by science, innovation and curiosity, that has been kept for decades,” she said before entering the space station. “Looking back at the Earth from these windows, we are reminded that cooperation is not only possible, but essential. There are no borders here, and hope is universal.”