Astronauts return safely to Earth

Three astronauts touched down on the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan on Monday in a flawless pre-dawn landing aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule after spending more than 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 2 am (local time), the Russian Space Flight Control Center announced as the message "Landing Accomplished" was flashed on a giant screen.

US astronaut Sunita Williams, one of three members of the International Space Station crew, smiles shortly after landing in a Soyuz capsule outside the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on Monday. The crew - NASA's Williams, Russian astronaut Yury Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide of Japan's JAXA space agency - touched down in the dark, chilly expanses of central Kazakhstan after a 125-day stay at the space station. Maxim Shipenkov / Associated Press

The successful landing came despite fears it could be postponed after workers in the Moscow region on Wednesday accidentally cut through a cable providing communications between Russia's mission control and the space station.

The three landed an hour before sunrise a few kilometers from the target northeast of Arkalyk in central Kazakhstan, a Central Asian former 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 and falling snow, with the outside temperature at around -10 C.

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

The Russian cosmonaut Malenchenko said 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.

The team was taken to a tent set up nearby to undergo medical tests.

A sign that read "Landing place of space vessel Soyuz TMA-05" was hammered into the ground by local officials.

Three planes, 12 helicopters and six emergency vehicles were mobilized for the landing mission, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

"All the operations in leaving orbit and landing went smoothly. The crew members who returned to Earth are feeling well," the Russian mission control said in a statement.

The three crew members had been on the space station since July. They will be replaced by a new team that blasts off on Dec 19 in a Soyuz vessel from Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. It will be made up of Russian Roman Romanenko, American Thomas Marshburn and Canadian Chris Hadfield.

They will join the remaining crew, Russians Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, and Kevin Ford of the US, who arrived on Oct 25.

Since 2009 there have been permanent teams of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station, whose capacity was previously limited to three people.

Agence France-Presse