Three astronauts landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Thursday, ending their 199-day mission after an unexpected "bonus month" aboard the International Space Station, NASA Television showed. "It was a textbook homecoming for the Expedition 43 crew," a NASA presenter said after the descent capsule of the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft touched ground amid waving feathergrass at 1944 local time (1344 GMT), some 92 miles south-east of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan.
"They have landed!" read a big screen at Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow. The capsule, charred by extreme heat on re-entry, landed upright, allowing search and recovery teams to expedite the crew's evacuation. Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, followed by Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency and Expedition 43 Commander Terry Virts of NASA, were carried and put on semi-reclined chairs a few minutes later for a breath of fresh air under a setting sun. A smiling Virts showed a "thumbs up" sign as a medical worker checked his pulse and blood pressure. "Everything worked by the second, step by step, the guys were great," Shkaplerov said.
The return of the crew from the $100 billion, 15-nation ISS had been delayed for a month after a rocket failed to deliver a Progress cargo craft on April 28. It harmlessly fell into the Pacific Ocean in early May. Virts said before departing from the ISS that the extra month in space amounted to "bonus days" for the crew.