A fuzzy video view from a camera monitoring the Soyuz craft's descent shows its touchdown in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning.
By Miriam Kramer, Space.com
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three spacefliers from the International Space Station touched down early Tuesday in Kazakhstan, bringing their five-month orbital adventure to an end.
The Soyuz brought Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko back to Earth at about 8:31 a.m. local time Tuesday (10:31 p.m. ET Monday).
The landing came a little more than three hours after the capsule undocked from the space station. That undocking marked the official end of the space station's Expedition 35, which Hadfield commanded. Russian Pavel Vinogradov takes over the new Expedition 36, leading fellow cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy for the remainder of the mission, which ends in September. [See photos of the Expedition 35 mission]
"Enormous thanks to everybody on Earth that makes this possible," Hadfield said during a change-of-command ceremony Sunday. "It's been a very special time for us onboard."
Three more spacefliers are slated to arrive in about two weeks, bringing the orbiting complex back up to its full complement of six.
Marshburn came home just two days after performing a dramatic emergency spacewalk on Saturday with Cassidy to find and fix a leak of ammonia coolant, which crew members first spotted just two days earlier. The two astronauts replaced a pump control box during the six-hour excursion. That apparently stopped the leak, though NASA officials cautioned that only time would tell if the fix is permanent.
Hadfield said the execution of that spacewalk — which went from conception to reality faster than any other excursion from the space station — filled him with pride in his crew and the many people aiding operations from the ground.
"The real-time execution of that was what just felt so good to me as commander of this crew," he said during Sunday's ceremony. "For me, this was just the personification of what the International Space Station is, and what the people mean to it."
Cosmic Log: Space station chief returns home a star
Hadfield took pains to share his spaceflight experience with people around the world. He posted updates and observations frequently on Twitter, recorded songs and videos aboard the orbiting lab (including David Bowie's famous "Space Oddity") and beamed home many photos of our planet from his perch hundreds of miles above it.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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This story was originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 7:35 PM EDT
