KOROLYOV, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. The descent capsule of the spaceship Soyuz TMA-11M with three spacemen from among the ISS-38 space mission landed in Kazakhstan's steppe as scheduled at 05:58, Moscow time, Wednesday, an official at the Flight Control Center (FCC) told Itar-Tass.
Search-and-rescue groups are moving towards the landing site.
"The capsule landed in the pre-planned area, approximately 147 km south east of the Kazakhstani city of Dzhezkazgan," the FCC official pointed out.
A rescue service aircraft picked up the signal of the ultra-short-frequency transmitter of the capsule immediately after the latter emerged from plasma and tracked it to the landing spot.
The returnees Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, American astronaut Richard Mastracchio, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA have worked in orbit for more than 187 days.
The ISS three-member crew remaining in orbit are Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and American astronaut Steve Swanson who assumed the functions of ISS commander following Koichi Wakata's returning to Earth.
Next crew of the ISS 40/42 long-duration space expedition will consist of Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev, American astronaut Reid Wiseman, and German astronaut Alexander Gerst.