The 60-year-old multimillionaire floated through the air hatches and onto the space platform at 0931 GMT to be greeted by ISS crewmembers, a spokesman for the mission control centre (TsUP) near Moscow, Nikolai Kryuchkov, said.

Bright-eyed but appearing nonplussed like a stranger at a party in pictures broadcast by Russian television, Tito faced into a monitor through which the TsUP officials were surveying the scene and expressed his appreciation with his short message.

Tito, 60, made history Saturday as the first space tourist to blast off into orbit, overcoming the strongly-expressed misgivings of the US space agency NASA.

As quoted by CNN television, he said he was having "a great trip here. I don't know about this adaptation that they're talking about. I'm already adapted."

In its objections to Tito's flight, NASA had argued that he lacked sufficient training to be able to fit in with life aboard the ISS and could jeopardise the work of the cosmonauts.

The businessman and former NASA engineer is due to spend the next week aboard the platform, having promised to pay Russia 20 million dollars for transport, food and board.

The Soyuz TM-32 vessel which lifted his into space on Saturday, making him the world's first space tourist, docked with a Zvezda service module attached to the ISS at 0757 GMT, 10 minutes earlier than had originally been scheduled.

The manoeuvre was carried out under automatic control, with Russian cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Yury Baturin ready to intervene manually if the situation called for it, Kryuchkov said.

After an hour and a half of routine checks of the locks used to secure the docking mechanism and the equalisation of the air pressure on board the Soyuz and the service module, Tito made his way aboard the ISS, preceded by Musabayev and followed by Baturin.

The three men are due to return to Earth next Sunday.

Tito will play no part in the work carried out aboard the platform by his Russian companions or the three astronauts who have lived on the platform since March, Russian Commander Yuri Usachev and Americans Susan Helms and James Voss.

The Soyuz mission's main objective is to replace an existing capsule already docked to the ISS.

To overcome NASA objections Tito signed an agreement that he will pay for any damage he might cause. He is also not to be allowed to visit the American segments of the ISS without an escort.

Tito, for whom the flight marks the culmination of a lifetime's ambition, is carrying a video camera, a collection of music and photographs of his family.

Russian television said he had experienced a slight malaise during the blast-off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Saturday, but TsUP officials were unable to confirm the report.

He was accompanied for the takeoff my several family members, friends and his companion Dawn Abraham.

Abraham, who burst into tears in relief as Tito's rocket soared into the sky on Saturday, was impatient for him to return, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported Monday.

"I want him to come home as quickly as possible because a cosmonaut's life is difficult and dangerous," it quoted her as saying.

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