ISS crew safely returned to Earth

The descent module from the International Space Station (ISS) softly landed in the Kazakh steppe early on Friday morning.

"The crew endured the descent and the landing well, and is cheerful", a representative of the space rescue service told the Mission Control Centre in the Moscow Region.

The descent module of the Souyz TMA-3 space ship with spacemen on board landed in the pre-set area on the territory of Kazakhstan. The commander of the search group watched the module's descent from a helicopter and reported to the Mission Control Centre by radio that the module had landed normally 52 km north-east of Arkalyk populated area.

The eighth permanent crew of the ISS - US astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri - returned to Earth from a six-month-long space expedition. An astronaut from the visiting expedition - representative of the European Space Agency Andre Kuipers - came back from orbit together with them after a ten-day mission.