ASTRONAUTS LAND SAFELY ON EARTH

MOSCOW: Three astronauts touched down on Monday on the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan in a Russian Soyuz capsule after spending over four months aboard the International Space Station.

Russia’s Yuri Malenchenko, Sunita Williams of the United States and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan touched down as scheduled just before 0200 GMT, the Russian Space Flight Control Center announced as the message “Landing Accomplished” was flashed on a giant screen.

The three landed an hour before sunrise a few kilometers from the target northeast of Arkalyk in central Kazakhstan, a Central Asian ex- Soviet republic, an official said on NASA TV, which showed the landing.

After stepping out of the capsule one by one, the three were placed side by side on a special seat and covered with a blue blanket to protect them from the cold, with the outside temperature at about - 10 Celsius.

They looked in good shape, with the American and the Japanese astronauts smiling for the cameras and the officials who greeted them.

The Russian cosmonaut Malenchenko said that the return to Earth had gone “admirably” well in reply to a journalist who asked him to say a few words.

Malenchenko, 50, had just completed his fifth space mission, while the other two had been on their second mission. AFP