KOROLYOV /Moscow region/, September 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Rescuers have reached the landing module of Russia’s Soyuz TMA-12M manned spaceship and are now evacuating three members of the International Space Station (ISS) crew who have returned from has landed in Kazakhstan early on Thursday, a spokesman for the mission control centre told ITAR-TASS.

“The cosmonauts are feeling well,” the spokesman said.

The module landed in the designated area in the steppe some 148 kilometres southeast of Kazakhstan’s city of Dzhezkazgan at 06:23 a.m. Moscow time. The three ISS crew members, Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artyomyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson have worked aboard the ISS for about 170 days.

The remaining crew onboard the International Space Station include Russian cosmonaut Maksim Surayev, who took over the command from Swanson, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst.

The upcoming space expedition will take off on September 26 from the Baikonur space centre onboard a Soyuz TMS-14M spaceship. The crew will include Russian cosmonauts Yelena Serova, Aleksandr Samokutyayev and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore.