The commander of the rescue group watched the descent from a helicopter and reported to the mission control center that the spacecraft had landed according to plan.
The crew has returned to the Earth after seven months onboard the ISS. Apart from Russian Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin and Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria from the United States, the 14th crew also includes the fifth space tourist and software billionaire, Hungarian-born American Charles Simonyi.
"Charles Simonyi and the crew of the 14th ISS mission have successfully gone through the descent and the landing, and are in a good mood. The temperature at the landing site in Kazakhstan is plus 19 °C (66.2 °F)," the rescue official told the mission control center.
The spacemen have been extracted from the landing capsule. Tyurin who was placed in a mutton-covered armchair, did not look very well to begin with after such a long time in orbit but adapted to the Earth conditions quite soon. Unlike Tyurin, Simonyi, who was extracted second, had a broad smile on his face. Lopez-Alegria felt normal but it took him some time to recover after zero-gravity.
The crew will be delivered to the Baikonur space center by a helicopter and then taken to the space training center of Zvyozdny Gorodok (star city) near Moscow.
