The first tourist in orbit checked into his holiday destination yesterday and said he was enjoying every minute.
"Welcome aboard!," Mr Yuri Usachev, Russian commander of the International Space Station, said in cheerful English as a hatch opened, admitting the 60-year-old California millionaire, Mr Dennis Tito, and two Russian cosmonauts from their Soyuz capsule.
"I love space!" Mr Tito announced. He grinned enormously and gave a thumbs-up sign as he floated through the space station. "It was a great trip here. I don't know about this adaptation that they're talking about. I'm already adapted." Mr Tito had paid a reported $20 million fare.
"Dennis has gotten about 10 years younger," said Mr Talgat Musabayev, Mr Tito's commander aboard the Soyuz.
Russian mission control said Mr Tito had been unwell on Sunday and had vomited, but had quickly recovered. Motion sickness is common even among professional spacemen, especially on their first day in space.
Mr Tito and the two accompanying Russians are to spend a week as guests of Mr Usachev and his two American crewmates on the station.
Mr Usachev and his crew, in red short-sleeved polo shirts, gave boisterous bear hugs to the newcomers, who arrived in baggy Russian space suits. Russian officials said the visiting crew would spend the rest of yesterday mainly at leisure.
"I hope Dennis comes home soon, because a cosmonaut's job is so difficult and dangerous," ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Mr Tito's girlfriend, Ms Dawn Abraham, as saying.
The US space agency, NASA, had disapproved of the amateur space buff's trip to the $95 billion space station, saying his presence could prove a dangerous distraction in an emergency.
The financier will not be allowed into US segments of the orbiter without an escort and has had to pledge to pay for anything he breaks. Russia says it is a full partner in the space station, and insists that it can fill its seat quota with whomever it wants.
Mr Yuri Semyonov, president of Energiya, the Russian company that builds and flies Moscow's spaceships, told reporters the restrictions placed on Mr Tito's movements in the space station were "of a political character", but Mr Tito would obey them.
Mr Semyonov said Russia was interested in arranging more commercial manned flights, and Mr Tito could have a role in this.