A crew of three Chinese astronauts, including the country's youngest-ever, docked early Saturday at the Tiangong space station, accompanied by four lab mice.

The Shenzhou-21 spaceship docked at 3:22 a.m., China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.

That was about 3½ hours after the spaceship departed from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, powered aloft by a Long March-2F rocket.