19 November,2012 12:28 PM IST | | Agencies
The Soyuz TMA-05M manned spacecraft touched down early Monday ending its three-and-a-half hour voyage to bring three International Space Station (ISS) crew members, including Sunita Williams, to Earth after 127 days in orbit.
The spacecraft carrying Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide undocked from ISS at 2.26 am today and landed on schedule northeast of the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at 5.53 am.
A mission control spokesman said, citing the rescue team, that the crew's physical condition was "normal" after the landing.
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Three planes, 12 helicopters and six rescue vehicles were deployed to the area to ensure a quick search and recovery of the returning crew from the landing capsule.
The crew will soon be evacuated from the re-entry capsule and after a health check in a mobile medical unit they will be flown by helicopter to an airfield in the Kazakh city of Karaganda and then to Moscow's Chkalovsky airfield.