However, with the capsule landing some 500 kilometres (300 miles) away from the preset destination, it was hours before the rescue teams could locate the spacecraft and its crew.

The astronauts managed to make radio contact with the rescue teams and assure them that they were fine before communications broke off, but the radio signal was too weak for the search party to use it to pinpoint the vessel.

A rescue airplane finally got into visual contact with the capsule at 8:21 Moscow time (0421 GMT), allowing the search teams to establish the precise location of the crew.

Meanwhile, the astronauts had managed to open the hatch and get out of the vessel an hour and a half after the landing, officials said, adding that two helicopters had been sent to the site to retrieve the crew.

Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin had been aboard the ISS since December. They were originally to have left in March, but their return to Earth was delayed because of the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

Columbia disintegrated during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere on February 1, killing all seven crew members and leading NASA to suspend all shuttle missions, including those to the ISS.

Russian flight commander Yury Malenchenko and US flight engineer Edward Lu, who travelled aboard Soyuz to the space station are due to stay aboard the ISS for six months.

Russian spacecraft currently provide the only transportation to the space station.

SPACE.WIRE