Soyuz capsule returns to Earth from International Space Station
The three cosmonauts returned after spending 220 days in space and orbiting the Earth 3,520 times, Nasa said in a statement.
A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed on Sunday in Kazakhstan, ending their seven-month research assignment.
According to Russian space agency Roscosmos, the capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and astronaut Don Pettit of US space agency Nasa landed on the Kazakh steppe near the city of Zhezkazgan at 6.20am (0120 GMT).
Roscosmos said the parachute-assisted landing was a trouble-free descent.
The three men returned after spending 220 days in space and orbiting the Earth 3,520 times, Nasa said in a statement.
The agency noted that, coincidentally, Mr Pettit celebrated his 70th birthday on Sunday.
Nasa said it was following its routine postlanding medical checks, and that the crew would return to the recovery staging area in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.
Pettit will then board a Nasa plane bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, while Roscosmos said Ovchinin and Vagner will depart for a training base in Star City, Russia.
On Friday, Mr Ovchinin handed over command of the ISS to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi in a change of command ceremony.
