The Dragon Grace capsule docked at the International Space Station on Thursday, seven hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral - a SpaceX speed record for the fastest trip by a US spacecraft to the outpost. The flight was the quickest yet not only for SpaceX but for any American entity, Nasa included.

An eight-hour sprint to the station

Thick clouds had threatened the countdown all morning before skies cleared enough for a safe 11.10am (1510 GMT) liftoff from Cape Canaveral. The launch had already slipped three weeks while SpaceX fixed the Dragon capsule's leaking fuel system.

Nasa TV's live broadcast showed the two craft racing along at about 17,500mph (28,100 km/h) as Grace closed on the station. The last crew to launch from American soil needed more than 30 hours to reach the outpost; journey length depends on the distance between spacecraft and station at launch.

The sprint capped a busy week of launches for the company. Three hours after the crew lifted off, SpaceX launched a Falcon rocket from California carrying more than 100 mini satellites. Another Falcon was set to soar late Thursday night from Florida, with a classified satellite for the national reconnaissance office. The same week, the company's massive Starship reached orbit for the first time.

Watkins at the helm

Jessica Watkins commands the mission as the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit. A geologist who worked with Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity a decade ago, she is making her second trip to the station after a lengthy stay there in 2022. She radioed down after liftoff: "Thanks for an amazing ride".

Late on Thursday, the four fliers floated through a pressurized vestibule into the station and addressed colleagues on Earth. Three of the four are space newcomers:

• •Jessica Watkins, commander
• •Luke Delaney, an American retired marine - space newcomer
• •Joshua Kutryk, a colonel in the Royal Canadian air force - space newcomer
• •Sergey Teteryatnikov, a Russian former submariner - space newcomer

On the Nasa livestream, Watkins said:

She noted the irony that such a short ride followed a long journey to orbit.

Lucky 13, by design

The mission marked the 13th crew SpaceX has launched for Nasa, not counting 2020's test flight, and the Crew-13 designation on their mission patch pays homage to Apollo 13, the 1970 moonshot that ended with the astronauts' safe return.

Black Teslas with plates reading "Lucky 13" carried the crew to the pad, and aboard the capsule was a small crocheted golden dragon, named Lucky, wearing a four-leaf clover around its neck. "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 from orbit. She called her crew "four of the luckiest humans on or off planet Earth".

A birth awaited from orbit

Joshua Kutryk has a countdown of his own: his wife, Heather, is due to give birth to their third child in late November, while he orbits Earth. That will make him the fourth man to become a father in orbit. After arrival, the Canadian colonel said it "feels really good" to represent his country in space, adding that he was "looking forward to a good mission after some sleep. That's what I'm gonna go do next".

Nasa manager Dana Weigel said on the eve of liftoff: "A lot of life-changing things can happen over six months." She said the space agency would do its best to keep Kutryk informed about his family, and the Canadian Space Agency likewise promised support for the family.

In 2004, Nasa provided a radio link between station astronaut Mike Fincke and his wife's delivery room as their daughter was born. Five years later, Randy Bresnik, commander of next year's Artemis III mission, called his wife's hospital from orbit. Austrian astronaut Franz Viehböck launched to the Soviet Union's Mir space station in 1991; his daughter was born a few hours later, and he learned of it only the next day.

Their stay aboard the station is planned to last six months, replacing four astronauts who have been living at the orbiting laboratory since February.