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Soyuz back safe |
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"Everything went as planned. The Soyuz TMA-5 landed on its side," a spokesman at mission control outside Moscow was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency. The craft touched down near Arkalyk in the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan at 2:08 a.m. Moscow time (1808 EDT).
A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying a crew from the international space station touched down bumped down on the Kazakh steppe early on Monday, bringing a Russian, an American and an Italian astronaut safely back to Earth from the International Space Station, Russian news agencies said.
Russian Salizhan Sharipov and American Leroy Chiao, who manned the station since last October, returned with Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori who spent 10 days in space. Remaining behind on the international space station are Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and American John Phillips, who will welcome the next replacement crew. That crew is scheduled to lift off on the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery on May 22.
Soyuz rockets have been the sole means of sending crews to the ISS since the U.S. shuttle Columbia disintegrated in Feb. 2003 over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board.
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