MOSCOW – Astronauts from Canada and Belgium and a Russian cosmonaut landed cautiously on the Kazakhstan steppes on Tuesday, wrapping up a six-month assignment on the International Space Station. The Russian Soyuz TMA-15 abridged accustomed Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and European Space Agency's astronaut Frank De Winne, of Belgium, affected bottomward after a block abreast the boondocks of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan's arid north, Russian Mission Control agent Valery Lyndin said.
Parachutes slowed the ability to a bendable touchdown at 10:15 a.m. Moscow time (0715 GMT), as scheduled.
Russian medical teams arrived in all-terrain vehicles to help the crew out of the capsule, in a carefully choreographed recovery operation.
The three crew members were later driven away to Arkalyk, located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the landing site. They are to be flown to Moscow later in the day.
A NASA doctor at the site of the landing reported that the three astronauts appeared to be doing very well after spending 188 days in space and their return to earth, according to a NASA Webcast.
The trio blasted off to the International Space Station on May 27. Their arrival marked the doubling of the station's permanent crew to six people.
With the mission, all five of the international partner agencies — NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency — were represented in orbit together for the first time, helping burnish the station's international credentials.
The expedition was also a milestone for the Canadian space program, marking the first time a Canadian has taken part in a long-term mission.
NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian Maxim Surayev remain on the station. They are to be joined later this month by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA's Timothy J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The first space station crew arrived in 2000, two years after the first part was launched. Until the May launch, no more than three people lived up there at a time. The space outpost has since expanded to accommodate a permanent crew of six.
With the U.S. shuttle fleet set to be grounded soon, NASA and other international partners will have to rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft alone to ferry their astronauts to the space station and back.
