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Soyuz reentry module with ISS crew lands in Kazakhstan steppe

The module lanede in a designated area about 146 kilometres southeast of the city of Dzhezkazgan

© TASS/Donat Sorokin

KOROLYOV /Moscow region/, March 12. /TASS/. Rescuers have reached the reentry module of the Soyuz TMA-14M spaceship which landed in Kazakhstan’s steppe some 146 kilometres southeast of the city of Dzhezkazgan, a spokesman for the Mission Control Centre told TASS on Thursday.

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Russia’s first female cosmonaut in past 20 years to return to Earth from ISS

The rescuers are evacuating the crew of Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Samokutyayev and Yelena Serova and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore who returned from the International Space Station (ISS) after a 170-day mission.

‘The crew members are feeling well," the spokesman said.

The module landed in a designated area. A rescuer service plane had detected a USB signal from the reentry module and traced it till the place of landing.

The Soyuz TMA-14M undocked from the ISS at 01:44 a.m. Moscow time. Its crew fulfilled a number of works with Russia’s Progress cargo spacecraft, the European cargo spaceship ATV-5, which after undocking from the ISS was drowned in the Pacific in February. Also, they carried out a wide scientific programme.

Samokutyayev and Maksim Surayev, a member of the previous ISS expedition, made a spacewalk under the programme of the station’s Russian segment.

Four spacewalks were performed under the American programme. Wilmore took part in all of them.

Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, U.S. astronaut Terry Virts and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti are staying at the ISS. Virts has taken over as the ISS commander from Wilmore.

The next expedition - Roscosmos /Russian Federal Space Agency/ cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly - will take off onboard a Soyuz TMA-16M spaceship from the Baikonur space centre on March 27.

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