Three astronauts touch down after 6 months in space

A three-man crew, including British astronaut
Tim Peake, landed in the Kazakh steppe on
Saturday after completing a six-month mission
at the International Space Station (ISS).

Peake, the first British astronaut on the ISS,
Russia's Yury Malenchenko and NASA's Tim
Kopra parachuted down to Earth in their Soyuz
capsule at 0915 GMT after spending 186 days
in orbit.

Video footage from the landing site, southeast
of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan, showed
medics attending to the smiling men.

"It was incredible. The best ride I've ever been
on," Peake said. "It has just been fantastic,
from start to finish."

The 44-year-old former helicopter test pilot
said he was looking forward to seeing his
family.

"I'm going to miss the view," he said, referring
to his six-month stint in space.
The trio had blasted off into space from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in
December.

At around 0215 GMT, they bid fairwell to NASA
astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian
cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey
Ovchinin, who remain aboard the ISS.
Their Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft then
undocked from the ISS, Russian space agency
Roscomos said.

Peake's mission has generated great
excitement in Britain, where the government
unveiled an ambitious new space policy on the
eve of his departure for the International Space
Station.

Peake's time in space was marked by a
number of milestones. In January, he became
the first Briton to walk in space, undertaking a
mission to replace an electrical unit.

In April he ran a marathon in space in record
time, strapped into a treadmill while thousands
ran the London Marathon.

Peake managed to achieve the fastest ever
marathon in space by marking a time of three
hours, 35 minutes and 21 seconds, setting a
Guinness World Record.

The next launch of astronauts from the
Baikonur cosmodrome is scheduled to take
place on July 7.It will take Anatoly Ivanishin of Russia, Kate
Rubins of the United States and Takuya Onishi
of Japan to the ISS.