Three astronauts return to Earth after ISS mission

MOSCOW, Russia – Canadian spaceman Chris Hadfield on Tuesday, May 14, returned to Earth along with two other astronauts after a half year mission to the International Space Station (ISS) that saw him become a global celebrity through his Twitter microblog.

Hadfield landed safely in the Kazakh steppe along with American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko aboard a Russian Soyuz-TMA capsule that had left the space station earlier Tuesday morning, mission control said.

Russian state television pictures showed the giant white parachute of the Soyuz capsule unfurling successfully after re-entry and the capsule then touching down in the Kazakh steppe, sending a plume of dust upwards into the sky.

The Soyuz touched down at 0231 GMT (10:31 am. Philippine time) in the steppe south of the central Kazakh city of Karaganda, Russian mission control and NASA TV confirmed.

On a sunny spring morning, all 3 astronauts were then successfully extracted from the capsule by recovery teams who rushed to the scene.

They were then placed in special chairs amid the long steppe grasses, covered in special thermal blankets and offered tea by the ground crews. All 3 appeared in good health.

Hadfield had captured the public imagination with regular updates on Twitter that gave an unprecedented insight into daily life in space and access to spectacular images taken from the ISS. – Rappler.com