Soyuz Touches Down in Kazakhstan

On Thurscay, March 18, 2010, at 12:24 GMT, Maxim Suraev, commander of Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, and NASA's Jeffrey Williams, commander of the International Space Station's Expedition 22, landed the Soyuz TMA-16 descent module in an area north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz had undocked from the ISS' Poisk docking module at 9:03 AM GMT.

Russian recovery workers endured frigid conditions to help the Soyuz crew exit the spacecraft and reaccustom themselves to Earth's gravity.

Members of the Soyuz crew had spent 167 days in the weightless environment of the ISS as part of the Expedition 21 and Expedition 22 crews.

During their time on the International Space Station, they supported two space shuttle flights.

US flight engineer Timothy Creamer, Russian flight engineer Oleg Kotov and Japanese flight engineer Soichi Noguchi remain on the ISS as part of Expedition 23.

They will be joined by Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko and Alexander Skvortsov and American astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson on April 4. A Soyuz spacecraft will carry them to the station.
Soyuz spacecraft will be used to transport crewmembers to the ISS by the end of the year, when NASA will have decommissioned its space shuttles.