Space crew returns to Earth

KARAGANDA, Kazakstan -- The crew of a mission to deliver a new "lifeboat" to the international space station has safely returned to Earth.

Russian cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev and Konstantin Kozeyev and French researcher Claudie Haignere, touched down in Kazakstan on Wednesday after 10 days in space.

Looking tired but happy, the trio gave their waiting families the thumbs-up signal as space officials said all three felt well.

Their Soyuz TM-32 spaceship landed in the remote steppes of the central Asian country, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) southwest of the city of Karaganda.

The ship had undocked from the international space station, Alpha, at 4:38 a.m. Moscow time (0138 GMT) and soft-landed in the steppes at 7:59 a.m. Moscow time (0359 GMT), Russian Mission Control reported.

"Everything went very well," reported Vera Medvedkova, spokeswoman at Russia's Mission Control in Korolyov, outside Moscow.

During the mission, the 44-year-old Haignere, who in 1996 became the first Frenchwoman in space, served as crew engineer.

One of the crew's main objectives was to deliver a new Soyuz TM-33 to the space station.

The capsule not only ferries astronauts to the station, but also serves as its lifeboat in the event of an emergency.

It is replaced every six months, according to the European Space Agency.

The Russian-French crew was also engaged in experiments on the ISS alongside its current crew, American Frank Culbertson and Russians Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, who have been aboard the station since August.

Haignere, who was met by her husband Jean-Pierre, is a rheumatologist and an expert in neuroscience.

She was the first Frenchwoman in space when she spent two weeks on Russia's Mir space station in 1996, studying the effects of weightlessness on the human body.

The trio were then put in a helicopter bound for Karaganda from where they were expected to travel to Star City, near Moscow, for mission debriefing.