A Soyuz space capsule made a "bullseye" landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan early yesterday, bringing a Russian, a US astronaut and a Dutchman back to Earth from the International Space Station.
NASA's Michael Foale and Russian Alexander Kaleri spent six months aboard the 16-nation, US$95 billion station. Dutchman Andre Kuipers, from the European Space Agency, spent just 11 days doing scientific experiments in space on his maiden voyage.
"It was right on the money, almost a bullseye landing for Soyuz," said NASA spokesman Robert Navias at the landing site near the northern Kazakh town of Arkalyk.
Russia has borne the brunt of ferrying crews and cargo to the station since the US grounded its space shuttles following the disintegration of the Columbia over Texas in February last year, killing all seven astronauts on board.
A Russian recovery team pulled the cosmonauts out of the capsule, charred black from re-entry, and allowed them to recover in reclining chairs before conducting medical checks and flying them to a base in Kustanai, 375km away.
"This is tea, not cognac," said Foale, wrapped in an overcoat and sipping from a plastic cup in early morning sun.
"How do I feel? It's like the morning after a late night party," he said at a later news conference.
The craft had disengaged from the International Space Station a few hours before its touchdown and started its return to Earth, using a large orange parachute and thrusters to control its descent.
"Everything was just fine and the soft landing engines worked wonders," General Vladimir Popov, commander of the recovery operation, said.
A similar Soyuz capsule carrying the US astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russia's Nikolai Budarin back from the space station made a hard landing hundreds of kilometers off target last May because of a technical glitch that caused an early re-entry.
The next space station crew landed safely last October, even though one member of the crew apparently hit a wrong button.
The latest mission had suffered a small leak of helium gas in the capsule on Thursday but it was not judged a danger.
Russia has proposed extending the six-month ISS missions to the station to a year in order to reduce its burden and potentially free up Soyuz craft for paying space tourists, but NASA has so far rejected the proposals.
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