Tim Peake boards the International Space Station

The latter two have been on the space station since March and are on a year-long mission.

Peake, 43, joins Russian space veteran Yury Malenchenko and Tim Kopra of NASA for a six-month mission on the ISS.

In a tweet posted on Sunday, Peake disclosed that the International Space Station (ISS) will be treating the astronauts with a Star Wars screening to be projected onboard.

The new crew will join the others who are already on the International Space Station: American astronaut Scott Kelly, who is the commander of Expedition 46 and cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko and Sergey Volkov.

Peake will become the first Briton at the ISS. It orbits the Earth at more than 27,000 kilometers (16,740 miles) per hour at an altitude of 400 kilometers (250 miles).

The UK spaceman docked last night after a gruelling six-and-a-half hour flight.

Travelling with him are Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko and Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra.

On the eve of Peake s departure, the British government unveiled an ambitious new space policy.

At 2:25 p.m. EST (1925 GMT) today, the hatches were due to be opened between the Soyuz and the Russian segment of the space station.

Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft can fly autonomously, through programs activated by the mission crew and ground control team, but manual control capabilities are included in case of any difficulty.

“I don’t think anything can truly prepare you for that moment and that will occur in the Soyuz spacecraft once we get injected into orbit I’ll be able to look out the right window and see the handsome view of Planet Earth”.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have also congratulated Major Peake on his arrival at the ISS this evening.

Tim Peake is not the first Brit in space – that honour went to Helen Sharman, who visited the Russian Mir space station as part of a privately contracted assignment over 20 years past.

Nearly ten minutes after the scheduled time, the Soyuz arrived and docked with the International Space Station, according to updates from The Guardian.

Peake has two sons, ages 6 and 4, and his younger son got some attention during the launch this morning, crying and saying, “I want to go with Daddy!”

Peake’s mission, called Principia after Isaac Newton’s seminal work, includes a number of scientific experiments such as testing the use of nitric oxide gas as a tool to monitor lung inflammation.