US-Russian 3-man space station crew lands safely

In this photo provided by NASA, the Cygnus supply ship is released from the International Space Station on Feb. 18. Orbital Sciences Corp. launched the capsule last month from Virginia under a $1.9 billion contract with NASA. The Cygnus delivered 3,000 pounds of goods, including belated Christmas gifts for the six-man crew and hundreds of ants for a student experiment. AP

MOSCOW—NASA says a Russian Soyuz capsule carrying a US-Russian crew has landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan after spending nearly six months in orbit on the International Space Station.

The agency said in a live broadcast that the capsule carrying American Mike Hopkins and Russians Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy touched down southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 9:24 a.m. local time Tuesday (0324 GMT, 11:24 p.m. EDT Monday). They spent 166 days in space.

The NASA TV broadcast showed the Soyuz TMA-10M capsule slowly descending by parachute onto the snow-covered steppes. Russian search and rescue vehicles quickly moved to the landing site for a quick recovery effort. Rescue crews maintained contact with the crew during their descent and reported they were fine.