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Astronauts Return To Earth After Six Months

3:01pm Saturday September 25, 2010
Damien Pearse

Three astronauts have landed safely back on Earth in a Russian space capsule after a six-month space mission.

US astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko landed in the Soyuz capsule in the central steppes of Kazakhstan. The capsule arrived from the International Space Station, after problems undocking delayed their journey by a day. We have to change tradition, I want a cucumber! I haven't had a cucumber in half a year. Astronaut Mikhail Kornienko

"The landing was without incident. The crew feels normal," a spokesman for the Russian mission control outside Moscow said. The first television images beamed from the space station showed the three-member crew who had remained behind pumping their fists and cheering the safe landing. Mission commander Skvortsov was the first to be helped out of the capsule and wrapped in a blue thermal blanket after the arduous flight.



Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko

Grinning widely, he flashed an okay sign to cameras and bit into an apple, the first food traditionally given to the crew after landing. "It was all superb up until the very last minute, the landing. I feel great," Skvortsov beamed. "You saw for yourself, we met the Earth softly and tenderly." But Kornienko joked he had no desire to chomp on an apple. "We have to change tradition, I want a cucumber! I haven't had a cucumber in half a year."



The astronauts spent more than six months in space

Nasa astronaut Dyson, the only crew member to have previously flown into space, was shown speaking to loved ones by satellite phone. While Friday's docking problem was the first involving the Soyuz, it was the third at the station in four months. The string of mishaps in a space programme that usually strives for and achieves pinpoint accuracy comes just before Nasa mothballs its shuttle later this year, leaving the ISS entirely dependent on the Russian Soyuz.