The three astronauts aboard China's Shenzhou-16 spaceship entered the country's space station and met with another astronaut trio on Tuesday, starting a new round of in-orbit crew handover.

The Shenzhou-15 crew opened the hatch at 6:22 p.m. (Beijing Time). The three space station occupants greeted the new arrivals, and they took group pictures.

The space get-together kicked off the second in-orbit crew rotation in China's space station.

According to the China Manned Space Agency, the six astronauts will live and work together for about five days to complete planned tasks and handover work.

The spaceship, launched on Tuesday morning, conducted a fast automated rendezvous and docking with the space station combination, and docked with the radial port of its core module Tianhe at 4:29 p.m. Tuesday (Beijing Time), said the CMSA.

The whole process took approximately 6.5 hours, the CMSA said.