MOSCOW, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Three International Space Station (ISS) crew members on board a re-entry capsule of the Russian spaceship Soyuz TMA-04M landed safely on Monday in Kazakhstan.
According to Russia's Mission Control Center, the spacecraft undocked from the ISS at 03:09 a.m. Moscow time (2309 GMT Sunday) and successfully landed at 06:53 a.m. Moscow time (0253 GMT) near the northern Kazakh city of Arkalyk.
Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, who had spent almost 125 days in space, told the Mission Control Center that they felt "normal."
During their stay at the ISS, the crew had conducted a spacewalk and carried out dozens of scientific experiments.
On the same day, the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos said the planned Oct. 15 launch of next manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-06M to the ISS would be postponed for a week due to some malfunctions.
The three new ISS crew members, Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin of Russia and Kevin Ford of the United States, will fly to the ISS during the last ten days of October on board the Soyuz spaceship.
"Some malfunctions have appeared in one of the devices of the descent module, we will replace it and carry out more tests," Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin told reporters.
He added that the delay of the Soyuz launch also "removes the stress with the fact that on the same date the second Dragon spaceship is to be launched."
After the retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft is the only way for astronauts to reach the ISS at least until 2015.
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