Three astronauts return to Earth of the Soyuz

The Soyuz spacecraft with threeastronauts on board landed successfully on Sunday in Kazakhstan , ending a mission of 193 days on the ISS International ( EEI ), reported the Control Center Space FlightRussia. The capsule, which returned Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko , U.S. astronautDonald Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers , landed at 12:14 local time (08:14 GMT) about 150 kilometers northeast of the Kazakh city of Dzhezkazkgan. The decline of the Russian spacecraft from the air was followed by three planes and 12 helicopters flew rescue the vast area where the Zoyuz landed, according to Russian news agency Itar-Tass and Novosti. "The crew endured well the descent and landing. The cosmonauts are in good spirits," said a member of the search teams to the Control Center Space Flight. The three astronauts posed for pictures and underwent medical tests before being flown to the Cosmonaut Training Center Yuri Gagarin, on the outskirts of Moscow, where they will spend a period of rehabilitation. During his stay on the ISS, which began in late December, Kononenko, Pettit and Kuipers performed a spacewalk, received and unloaded three ships docked Russian Progress, and unhitched the first U.S. cargo ship Dragon. The three astronauts performed some 30 experiments aboard the space platform for more than six-month mission. The return trip from the ISS lasted three hours and 26 minutes after the Soyuz is disengaged from the platform, where the Russian Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba Puerto Rican. To the three astronauts will join three other crew members this month: Russian Yuri Malenchenko, the American Sunita Williams and Japanese Akihiko Hoshide, who will be traveling from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.