Moscow: A Russian cosmonaut and a US
astronaut returned to Earth Thursday from the International Space
Station (ISS) after 169 days in space, mission control in
Moscow said.
"The crew of the Souyz TMA-16 craft is on Earth," it
said in a statement, after Jeffrey Williams of the US and
Russia's Maxim Surayev touched down after five-and-a-half
months together on the ISS.
At 1125 GMT, the spacecraft "made a safe landing in
the designated area northeast of the town of Arkalyk" in the
steppes of Kazakhstan, the mission control said.
"The cosmonauts are feeling well," it added.
"Working in frigid temperatures, Russian recovery
teams were on hand at the landing site to help the crew exit
the Soyuz vehicle and readjust to gravity," the US space
agency NASA said in a statement.
NASA said that as members of the Expedition 21 and 22
crews, the two presided over the completion of the US segment
of the space station.
The Russian-US duo had been high above Earth for 169
days, blasting off into space on September 30, 2009 and
docking with the ISS on October 2, according Russia's mission
control.
Until December 1, Surayev and Williams had worked as
flight engineers in a crew that also included Belgian Frank De
Winne, Canadian Robert Thirsk and Russian Roman Romanenko.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, March 18, 2010, 20:33