The Shenzhou XXIII crew has entered the Tiangong space station and met with the outgoing Shenzhou XXI astronauts.

The new arrivals — mission commander and spaceflight engineer Colonel Zhu Yangzhu, spacecraft pilot Colonel Zhang Zhiyuan, and science payload specialist Lai Ka-ying — were launched by a Long March 2F carrier rocket at 11:08 pm Sunday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.

After flying about three and a half hours, their spaceship docked with the front port on the Tianhe core module, the central piece of the Chinese space station, at 2:45 am Monday, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Zhu and his teammates then started making preparatory work to enter the space station, which included changing into intravehicular suits from their pressure suits and configuring their spaceship.

Meanwhile, their peers in the Shenzhou XXI — mission commander Senior Colonel Zhang Lu, spaceflight engineer Major Wu Fei and payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang — waited inside the connection cabin.

After all preparations were done, the Shenzhou XXI team opened a hatch in the connection cabin at 5:13 am to welcome the new team of astronauts, the space agency said in a statement.

The two crews hugged and exchanged greetings before taking a group photo.

This has become the eighth in-orbit gathering of Chinese astronauts, and marks a historic moment for Lai, the nation's first female civilian astronaut and also the first orbital traveller from Hong Kong.