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Astronauts return safely to Earth from Space station

A Russian space capsule carrying an Italian, a Russian and an American hurtled safely home to Earth from the International Space Station yesterday, landing softly on the marshy Central Asian steppes in the early morning darkness.

Search-and-rescue helicopters spotted the capsule floating under a parachute toward its designated arrival site about 90km north of the Kazakh town of Arkalyk. The TMA-5 capsule then landed upright in the slush less than three-and-a-half hours after undocking from the orbiting space station, where a new crew stayed behind to prepare to welcome the first space shuttle flight after a two-year hiatus.

Russia's space program has been the only way of getting astronauts to the station since the Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003, sparking a suspension of shuttle flights. NASA is hoping to renew shuttle flights sometime next month.

"Again our Russian colleagues have shown how flexible they can be in the face of such daunting weather conditions in the landing zone to safely recover the crew," William Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, told reporters at Russian Mission Control in Korolyov, outside Moscow.

"Step by step ... we'll continue our steps as partners to complete the international space station and then move on beyond the Earth's orbit," he said.

Italian Roberto Vittori, Russian Salizhan Sharipov and American Leroy Chiao climbed out of the capsule and were whisked to a mobile hospital for a quick checkup; more thorough examinations were to be conducted after they arrived later yesterday at Star City, the cosmonaut training center outside Moscow.

Vittori, a European Space Agency astronaut, spent eight days on the station, while Sharipov and Chiao had been on the orbiting lab since last October. Mission Control said Sharipov reported that the crew felt fine.

Remaining behind on the station were Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and American astronaut John Phillips, whose six-month mission is slated to include welcoming the first US space shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster two years ago.

Engineers followed the capsule's journey through space on a map projected on a large screen at Mission Control and periodically communicated with the crew as it sped toward Earth.
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