Soyuz capsule touches down in Kazakhstan with astronauts from Russia, US, Canada returning from International Space Station

Launch of the three astronauts in December was the first since a Soyuz rocket failed just minutes after blast-off, forcing an emergency landing

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The Soyuz MS-11 near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:37pm, 25 Jun 2019Updated: 12:39pm, 25 Jun 2019

The first crew to blast-off to the International Space Station following a launch accident that deepened doubts over Russia’s space programme returned to Earth safely on Tuesday.

Nasa astronaut Anne McClain, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos, and Canadian Space Agency record-holder David Saint-Jacques emerged from the spacecraft to applause from support crews, after touching down near the Kazakh city of Dzhezkazgan.

Video from the landing site broadcast by Nasa showed the three sitting in chairs smiling as they were attended to by staff before their journey back to Moscow for Kononenko and Houston for McClain and Saint-Jacques.

Kononenko joked that he was “happy to see any kind of weather” after coming back from space.

The trio’s launch on December 3 was the first after a Soyuz rocket carrying Russia’s Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague failed in October just minutes after blast-off, forcing the pair to make an emergency landing.

Soyuz capsule touches down in Kazakhstan with astronauts from Russia, US, Canada returning from International Space Station

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Launch of the three astronauts in December was the first since a Soyuz rocket failed just minutes after blast-off, forcing an emergency landing

Launch of the three astronauts in December was the first since a Soyuz rocket failed just minutes after blast-off, forcing an emergency landing