The first-ever all-civilian crew to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) arrived safely at the orbiting research platform on Saturday to begin a week-long science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight. 

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, carrying a retired NASA astronaut and three businessmen who each paid $55 million to participate in the voyage, docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. ET after a 45-minute delay caused by a technical glitch at the station.

'I hope you enjoyed the extra half-orbit in Dragon,' SpaceX flight controllers said after docking. 

'We're happy to be here, even though we're a bit late, and looking forward to the next chapter,' commander Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut and station commander, said.

The Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), which was organized by the Houston-based company Axiom Space, is just the first of many anticipated private crewed missions into space, as the organization has already booked several other flights to the ISS with SpaceX, according to Space.com.

Axiom also aims to start launching modules to the orbiting lab in late 2024 that will become a free-flying commercial space station in low Earth orbit. 

The Crew Dragon docked about 21 hours after the four-man multinational Axiom team - which includes Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy, U.S. entrepreneur Larry Connor and ex-Israeli Air Force pilot Eytan Stibbe - lifted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Friday, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.

The Crew Dragon capsule lofted to orbit by the rocket and docked with the ISS on Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles above the Central Atlantic Ocean, a live NASA webcast of the coupling showed.