China's Shenzhou-9 capsule, with its crew of three, has docked with the Tiangong-1 space lab.
The coupling of the vehicles occurred at 14:07 Beijing time (06:07 GMT; 07:07 BST).
The latest Shenzhou mission was launched on Saturday, taking the nation's first female astronaut into orbit.
Thirty-three-year old Liu Yang flies with Commander Jing Haipeng, 46, and fellow flight engineer, Liu Wang, 42.
It was another two hours after the docking before the astronauts moved between the vehicles.