Space station trio return safely to earth

By DMITRY SOLOVYOV


NEAR ARKALYK, Kazakhstan - A Soyuz space capsule made a "bull's eye" landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan early Friday, bringing a Russian, a US astronaut and a Dutchman back to Earth from the International Space Station.

Nasa's Michael Foale and Russian Alexander Kaleri spent six months aboard the 16-nation, $95 billion station. Dutchman Andre Kuipers, from the European Space Agency, spent just 11 days in space doing scientific experiments on his maiden space voyage.

"It was right on the money, almost a bull's eye landing for Soyuz," said Nasa spokesman Robert Navias at the landing site near the northern Kazakh town of Arkalyk.

Russia has borne the brunt of ferrying crews and cargo to the space station since February 2003, after the United States grounded its space shuttles following the disintegration of the Columbia over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board.

A Russian recovery team pulled the cosmonauts out of the capsule, charred black from its re-entry, and allowed them to recover in reclining chairs before conducting medical checks ahead of a helicopter flight to an operations base in Kustanai, 235 miles away.

"This is tea, not cognac," said Foale, wrapped in an overcoat and sipping from a plastic glass in the early morning sun. "It all went off very smoothly and the landing was surprisingly soft."

The craft, which touched down at 4:11 a.m. Moscow time had disengaged from the International Space Station a few hours earlier and started its descent back to Earth, using a large orange parachute and thrusters to control its descent.

"Everything was just fine and the soft landing engines worked wonders," General Vladimir Popov, commander of the recovery operation, told Reuters. "I think that Alexander Kaleri as the most experienced of the three felt the best of all."

A similar Soyuz capsule carrying the US astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russia's Nikolai Budarin back from the ISS made a hard landing hundreds of kilometers off target last May because of a technical glitch that caused an early re-entry.

The next ISS crew landed safely with clockwork precision last October, even though one member of the crew had apparently hit a wrong button.

"I'm so happy, it was so interesting," said Dutchman Kuipers, speaking in Russian. "I'm not even giddy and I hope that my space colleagues feel fine too."

British-born Foale spoke to his wife and children at mission control in Moscow by satellite phone shortly after landing, said Nasa's Navias. "He said he was very struck by the beauty of the International Space Station."

- REUTERS