CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With hugs and smiling faces all around, the International Space Station's Expedition Four crew welcomed aboard shuttle Atlantis' seven astronauts on Wednesday.

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The heartwarming greeting came two hours after Atlantis commander Mike Bloomfield gracefully piloted the 100-ton spaceplane to a perfect docking with the station, at the forward end of the U.S. Destiny science laboratory.

"We've got the entire crew together," Bloomfield said as all ten crewmembers could be seen on NASA TV floating nearby. "It's great to see these guys, they look wonderful and the station looks like it's in great shape."

The visitors from Earth were the first the station crew, Russian commander Yuri Onufrienko and American flight engineers Dan Bursch and Carl Walz, had received since they boarded the frontier outpost 117 days ago.

The rendezvous and docking capped a two-day chase that began with Atlantis' Monday launch from the Kennedy Space Center and continued with a series of engine firings that eventually brought the shuttle up close to the 17-story complex.

The two spacecraft first appeared to each other Wednesday morning as stars on the horizon, but quickly grew into easily distinguished shapes.

Soon the cameras lining the shuttle's payload bay and on the station's Canadian robot arm could zoom in and see familiar forms in the windows.

"We can see one of the cameras with the light on and we're waving," Atlantis mission specialist Ellen Ochoa called over to the station less than an hour before docking.

"I think we can see you all waving in there too," replied Walz. "We've got a good view of you all as you're coming in."

As Atlantis moved to within 600 feet of the station, Bloomfield took manual control of the process and began a delicate balancing act between the desire to save fuel and not crash into the station as both vehicles orbit the Earth at 17,500 mph.

"You're always aware of the speed when you're flying in space because whenever you look out the window you can see it," Bloomfield told SPACE.com during a pre-launch interview. "And you're always playing this balancing game between being too fast or too slow, and the bottom line is to use as little propellant as possible."

Propellant is the "life blood" of any shuttle mission, Bloomfield said.

The more of it there is, the more options a crew has in solving any potential problems, handling any required maneuvers and being able to get home, he said.

As the two ships touched at 12:05 p.m. EDT (1605 GMT), mechanical latches grabbed hold of each other to firmly lock the two vehicles together as the complex flew 242 miles (390 kilometers) above south-central China, over the east face of the Himalayas.

After ensuring there was an air tight seal along the connecting tunnel, crewmembers swung open the hatches at 2:07 p.m. EDT (1807 GMT) to begin the brief welcome celebration.

Wasting no time, the combined station and shuttle crewmembers participated in a mandatory safety briefing and then were scheduled to begin transferring supplies and equipment from Atlantis to the outpost.

One of the first items scheduled to move is a protein crystal growth experiment that is to spend nearly two months aboard the station and then be returned to Earth in June by shuttle Endeavour, the same mission that is to swap the Expedition Four and Five crews.

Three spacesuits also will be moved over to the station's Quest airlock to support four spacewalks planned during the next week -- the first of which is scheduled for Thursday when the crew is to install the S-Zero truss and begin making more than 200 mechanical and electrical connections.

Atlantis is to remain docked to the station until next Wednesday, when the shuttle will begin a two-day trip home to land on April 19 back in Florida.