ARKALYK, Kazakhstan (AFP) - A space crew of three returned to Earth from the International Space early Saturday, in a Russian capsule which landed on the freezing steppe of Kazakhstan.

"There is landing!" flashed a Russian mission control centre message transmitted by Nasa. Rescue teams rushed to recover the capsule carrying Nasa US astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian flight engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin.