Russian-American crew returns from space

MOSCOW // A Soyuz capsule carrying a Russian-American crew touched down on target in Kazakhstan today after a descent from the international space station, safely delivering the first two men to follow their fathers into space. The Soyuz TMA-12 capsule landed this morning about 90km north of Arkalyk in north-central Kazakhstan. Search and recovery crews buzzed in on Mi-8 helicopters and extracted Richard Garriott, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko from the capsule, which landed on its side on the brushy surface under a clear sky.

"What a great ride that was," said Mr Garriott, an American computer game designer who paid some US$30 million for a 10-day stay on the space station. Sitting in an armchair and wrapped in a blue blanket against the near-freezing temperature on the steppe, he smiled broadly. "This is obviously a pinnacle experience," Mr Garriott said in televised comments. He was greeted by his father, Owen Garriott, a retired Nasa astronaut who flew on the US space station Skylab in 1973.

"Hey, Papa-san," said Richard Garriott, 47. The pair shook hands. "How come you look so fresh and ready to go?" Owen Garriott, 77, asked his son. "Because I'm fresh and ready to go - again," he replied. Sergei Volkov sat next to Mr Garriott. The son of a cosmonaut, he beat Mr Garriott as the first human being to follow a parent into space when he flew up to the space station six months ago. Oleg Kononenko, who also spent 199 days in space, was the last out of the capsule and could not be seen in the TV footage.

The head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, said on state-run Vesti-24 television that Mr Kononenko had a tougher time than his fellow cosmonauts during the descent but "feels good now". It was the first space mission for all three men. The uneventful descent was a relief for space officials - and the crew - after technical problems caused unusually steep "ballistic descents" for the last two returning crews, putting them hundreds of kilometres off course and subjecting them to stronger gravitational force than in a usual.

*AP