[size=1.2em]Russian Oleg Kotov, American Timothy Creamer and Soichi Noguchi of Japan, who had been aboard the orbiting laboratory since late December, appeared cheerful and healthy in a video feed from the landing site.
[size=1.2em]After being removed from the capsule still strapped in their seats, they smiled and gave thumbs-up signs, moving slowly as they readapted to gravity after 163 days in space.
The capsule, slowed by parachutes as it approached the ground, landed on its side, which sometimes happens with Soyuz landings, but otherwise there were no problems reported in the three and a half hour trip from the ISS.
Their departure leaves three astronauts aboard the space station - Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko and American Tracy Caldwell Dyson.
Nasa's Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker and Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin are to join them after blasting off from Russia's space launch facility in Kazakhstan on June 16.
From the landing site, the astronauts were to be flown by helicopter to the north-eastern Kazakh city of Karaganda for a welcoming ceremony. Afterwards, Kotov was to be taken to Moscow while Creamer and Noguchi were to be flown to Nasa facilities in Houston.
The first space station crew arrived in 2000, two years after the first part was launched.
[size=1.2em]That will leave Nasa without its own means to send astronauts into space for the first time in half a century.
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[size=1.2em]During their time in space, the newly returned crew worked on outfitting the space station and conducting an array of experiments in biology, biotechnology and physical and material sciences.
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