ISS astronauts make safe landing in Kazakhstan

Washington: Three members of the Expedition 34 crew undocked from the International Space Station and returned safely to Earth on Friday, making a landing in Kazakhstan.

The trio wrapped up a mission, which lasted for more than four and a half months. Station Commander Kevin Ford of NASA and Soyuz Commander Evgeny Tarelkin and Flight Engineer Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency undocked their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft from the space station at 6:43 pm Central Daylight Time (CDT) and landed northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at about 10:10 pm. The astronauts arrived at the station on October 25, 2012, and spent 144 days in space, 142 of which were aboard the orbiting laboratory. Ford, Tarelkin, and Novitskiy orbited Earth 2,304 times, which amounts to almost 61 million miles. ANI