Russian, American and Japanese return to Earth from ISS

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, American astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide have returned to Earth. The Soyuz TMA-05M capsule has landed safely in Kazakhstan this morning.

The landing of the members of the 33rd ISS mission took place at 05:53 a.m. Moscow time, about 85 kilometers northeast of Arkalyk, reports NTV. All operations to descend from orbit without remarks. The cosmonaut and astronauts are fine, the website of the Mission Control said.

The ISS crewmembers, who are not back on Earth, had been living on the station since July of this year. During the expedition, they accepted three Russian cargo ships Progress, took part in the working of the European and the Japanese transport ships and conducted a scientific program, BFM.ru reports.

Before the arrival of the next long mission,  two Russian cosmonauts and one US astronaut will continue work on the orbit: Oleg Novitsky (Russia), Evgeny Tarelkin (Russia) and Kevin Ford (USA).

The 34th mission to the ISS will blast off on December 19^th, on board the Soyuz TMA-07M manned spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The main crew includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, NASA astronaut Thomas Mashbern and astronaut of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Chris Hadfield.