A Soyuz craft containing three cosmonauts, two Russian and a Malaysian, landed on Sunday in Kazakhstan. The capsule actually deviated from its planned landing site due to technical problems which occurred during the descent.

The craft carrying Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, Malaysia’s first cosmonaut and the first Muslim sent in space, returned to Earth safely and no one was harmed during the flight and the landing. Russian search and rescue teams quickly located the craft, said Russia's Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin.

The mission ended on Sunday was the 15th long-term expedition aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The two Russian cosmonauts spend 196 days in orbit.

The capsule has reached the ground of the Kazakh steppes at 1039 GMT after detaching from the earth's sole orbiter at 0714 GMT, news agency Interfax reported citing Russian mission controllers.

This was the first "ballistic" re-entry from space since the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft returned on May 3, 2003, with the space station's sixth full time crew.

As the capsule landed about 211 miles west of Arkalyk, there was no television coverage of the event. Nevertheless, the landing was monitored by NASA commentator Rob Navias from the Johnson Space Center's mission control in Houston.

"The crew is safe on the ground," Navias reported. "It landed almost in an upright position, slightly canted, we are told, one helicopter on the ground, others soon to arrive to continue the process of beginning to safe the vehicle and extract the crew."

Malaysia’s Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the 35-year-old cosmonaut, who is a doctor in every-day life, was selected from approximately 10,000 candidates involved in the nation-wide program which began in 2003 and was destined to find the right person for this historic event.