The Soyuz capsule made a soft landing in darkness near the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at 02:08 am Moscow time (2208 GMT Sunday), mission control officials told Russian news agencies.

"Everything went according to plan," an official told the ITAR-TASS news agency. The head of the welcoming team, General Vladimir Popov, told the agency that the astronauts were all in good health, although the landing had been difficult due to bad weather and darkness.

However, with six Mi-6 helicopters, two AN-12 aircraft and evacuation vehicles in the area, "the landing capsule was spotted despite the darkness as soon as it opened its parachute and three helicopters accompanied it until it landed".

Sharipov was the first to emerge from the Soyuz spacecraft after its landing, followed by Chiao and Vittori.

The astronauts were then taken by helicopter to the Kazakh city of Arkalyk for a first medical examination, and were being flown to Moscow's Chkalovski airport, accompanied by doctors.

"The cosmonauts Salizhan Sharipov and Leroy Chiao, who worked in orbit for nearly 193 days, as well as the astronaut of the European Space Agency, Roberto Vittori, are feeling fine," Popov said.

The Soyuz had left the ISS to return to Earth late Sunday, just before 10:45 pm (1845 GMT).

Its departure from the ISS had been delayed by four minutes because of a temporary problem with the oxygen supply in Vittori's flight suit, Russian space officials said.

Sharipov and Chiao had been in space since October, where they spent 193 days, performing two spacewalks. Theirs was the tenth mission on the ISS.

Vittori completed a 10-day scientific mission on the ISS. The European Space Agency (ESA) called his mission "a complete success," in a release published shortly after the Soyuz touched down.

Vittori performed 22 experiments on board the ISS, including tests on astronaut fatigue, the durability of components of microsatellites, research into electromagnetic waves emanating from earth that may be linked to earthquakes, and the growing of shoots as a potential source of food for those in orbit.

Together with the three men, some 50 live snails also returned to Earth.

Their mission was to spend more than a month on the ISS as part of series of experiments on weightlessness.

A Russian and an American, Sergei Krikalev and John Phillips, have replaced Sharipov, Chiao and Vittori on the ISS. The two will spend six months in space.

During their stay, they are expected to meet up with the crew of the US space shuttle Discovery, returning to space missions more than two years after the Columbia shuttle disaster in February 2003.

Columbia's seven-member crew all died when the shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

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