"Our expedition was number 13 and there had been a solar eclipse the day before we left," Marcos Pontes, the first Brazilian to go into space, said with a smile.

He landed back on Earth Sunday after an 11-day journey, with ISS astronauts Russian Valery Tokarev and American William MacArthur in tow.

Pontes told journalists at Star City outside Moscow how his team fought off bad luck with pictures of Soviet hero Yury Gagarin, who 45 years ago this April became the first man in space.

"I was walking on Red Square in Moscow when I bought a T-shirt with a picture of Gagarin on it," he said. "It brought me good luck." Also, "there was also a picture of Gagarin put up in the inside of the station. Gagarin looked at us from there and calmed our worries."

Tokarev said the space station, where he and MacArthur had spent 190 days before making the return journey with Pontes, had also been under protection of a cross offered by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II. "You could say that our station was blessed."

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