No-one was on board the Dragon capsule that launched Saturday on its first test flight, only an instrumented dummy.
But the three space station astronauts had front-row seats as the Dragon neatly docked on Sunday morning and became the first American-made, designed-for-crew spacecraft to pull up in eight years.
If the six-day demonstration goes well, SpaceX could launch two astronauts this summer under Nasa’s commercial crew programme.
Both astronauts were at SpaceX Mission Control in California, observing all the action.
While SpaceX has sent plenty of cargo Dragons to the space station, crew Dragon is a different vehicle.
It docked autonomously, instead of relying on the station’s robot arm for help.