Live: Touchdown! Soyuz Crew Lands Safely

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An astronaut, cosmonaut and space tourist have returned safely home to Earth early Wednesday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, landing on the central Kazakhstan steppes a few hours after departing the International Space Station.

Search and rescue teams that had surrounded the landing area in helicopters quickly got to work helping Mike Finke, Yury Lonchkov and Charles Simonyi out of the spacecraft, which rested on its side after the 3:16 a.m. landing (1:16 p.m. local time) in chilly 48-degree weather.

A medical tent was set up for post-flight examinations, and the crew members were swaddled in blue blankets and seated in recumbent chairs to help ease their transition back to Earth's gravity.

"The crew reported they feel fine," NASA mission controllers in Houston told the three Expedition 19 crew members still up on the space station.

Video showed Fincke shaking hands and giving a thumbs-up sign, Lonchakov smiling and Simonyi kissing his wife.

The Soyuz, which experienced two unplanned ballistic re-entries in 2007 and 2008, apparently performed well for a second consecutive landing. Rob Navias, a NASA public affairs official at the landing site, said the landing was 2 kilometers long but essentially "a bulls-eye."

Within about eight hours, the crew will be flown back to Star City, Russia.

During their nearly six-month expedition, U.S. Air Force Col. Fincke and Russian Air Force Col. Lonchokov helped prepare the space station for a planned doubling of crew sizes to six people starting in May.

Simonyi, a former developer of Microsoft Office software, completed a 11-day stay at the orbiting science complex that was his second in two years, reportedly at a cost of $35 million.

The Soyuz shoved away from the station orbiting 220 miles above eastern Russia just before midnight Eastern time, with its three passengers strapped in custom-fitted reclining seats designed to cushion the thud of landing.

"Bye, bye, station," one of the departing crew members said, according to a Russian commentator, as the station receded.

"All the best," members of the outgoing and remaining crews said to each other.

Engines fired about two-and-a-half hours later to slow the spacecraft and guide its fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere, where two of the three Soyuz modules separated and burned up as intended.

The first of several parachutes deployed at just after 3 a.m., and Soyuz thrusters fired just a few feet from the ground to soften the touchdown.

The landing at 3:16 a.m. EDT was delayed a day and shifted to a different site than usual to position it on less soggy ground.

Fincke and Lonchakov launched on the Soyuz TMA-13 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Oct. 12 and docked at the station two days later.

They helped install and troubleshoot a critical water recycling system delivered by space shuttle Endeavour in November.

The system is designed to recycle urine, sweat and other condensate for use as drinking water, a necessary system for NASA and international partners to sustain larger crews.

Last month, the pair assisted shuttle Discovery's crew with the installation of a final pair of power-generating solar arrays on the station's right side.

In between shuttle visits, Fincke and Lonchakov performed two spacewalks during their expedition, on Dec 22 and March 10.

Their Expedition 18 crew at different times included American astronauts Greg Chamitoff and Sandra Magnus and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Chamitoff and Magnus returned home on Endeavour and Discovery, respectively, while Wakata remains on the station as an Expedition 19 flight engineer. He's the first Japanese to participate in a long-duration spaceflight.

Wakata is joined on the space station by the expedition's Russian commander, Gennady Padalka, and American astronaut Dr. Michael Barratt.

In late May, three more crew members - cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk and European astronaut Frank De Winne - are scheduled to arrive at the station and increase to six the number of long-term residents.

That crew, representing all the station's major international partners, may be the first to drink from the new recycling system, once it is cleared for use by NASA scientists.

Before departing, Fincke praised the achievements of international partners working on the station.

"We do everything together," he said during the farewell ceremony. "We're humanity's bright hope for the future."

Fincke now has the third most time in space of any American astronaut, with a total of 366 days in space including his prior tour on the station in 2004. He trails leader Peggy Whitson by 11 days and Michael Foale by eight days.

IMAGES: Click to enlarge the images from NASA TV. Above, Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov are treated after landing, not far from the empty Soyuz capsule. Center: the capsule was filmed from a helicopter nearing its landing. Bottom: a computer animation of the Soyuz landing.