The crew formed by astronauts Sergey Volkov (Roscosmos), Satoshi Furukava (JAXA) and Michael Fossum (NASA) has successfully returned to Earth today at 6.25 Moscow time after a long duration mission at ISS, the press-service of Roscosmos reports. AEX.ru

The descent module of manned Soyuz TMA-02M spaceship with three crew members has landed in Kazakhstan near Arkalyik town. The landing has been performed in normal mode.

It was the second flight of digital spacecraft. The new flight control system was up to the assigned task again.

Sergey Volkov and his colleagues have completed their bi-annual shift at the orbit.

A lot of scientific studies and experiments have been carried out during the expedition, for example, “Environment of ISS”, “Seiner”, “Lightning-Gamma”, “BTN-Neutron”, “Ginseng-2”, “Laktolen”, “Biorisk”, “Vector-T”, “Calcium”, “Econ”, “Hurricane”.

The station has been fitted with additional equipment and the measures for its maintenance have been assumed. The members of the crew of the 29th long-duration mission have walked in space twice. Fuel, needed for station’s flight in manned mode, provisions, water, oxygen and other expendable materials have been delivered to orbit by Russian cargo ships Progress M-11M and Progress M-13 along with American Atlantis spacecraft.

The flight of ISS continues. At present the crew of 30th long-duration mission is having the duty at the ISS. It is formed by Daniel Berbank (commander, NASA) and onboard engineers: Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanshin (Roscosmos).