BAIKONUR, March 29 (RIA Novosti) – The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft, carrying new crew members to the International Space Station (ISS), docked with the station as scheduled on Friday, a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

“The docking was held by command from Earth at the designated time, in automatic regime,” the source said.

Normally, a trip from Earth to the ISS takes about two days. Thursday, a Soyuz capsule docked with the orbiting laboratory after less than six hours of flight time, setting a record.

Accelerating the trip wasn’t an issue of newer technology or more powerful engines, necessarily, but of better math and planning.

The Russian vehicle essentially took a shortcut that required precisely timed steering over the course of four orbits, putting three crew members on the space station at 10:28pm ET — just five hours and 45 minutes after takeoff from Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz crew comprises Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and Christopher Cassidy of NASA, who will join their colleagues Roman Romanenko of Russia, Chris Hadfield of Canada and Thomas Marshburn of the United States.

During their planned 168-day mission, the new ISS crew members will take part in docking and unloading five spacecraft: four Russian Progress space freighters and Europe’s ATV-4 supply craft. Four spacewalks are also scheduled.

They will also carry out 42 scientific experiments.

Vinogradov and Kotov have already taken two spaceflights. For Cassidy, this is the second spaceflight in total, but the first one onboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.