Brazil's first astronaut landed safely in the Kazakh steppe today, returning from a 10-day trip in space with a Russian-US crew that spent six months on board the International Space Station.
"Soyuz has made a soft landing," a mission control official in Moscow said after the small Soyuz capsule, charred black from re-entry into the atmosphere, bumped down in northern Kazakhstan's steppe.
Russian military helicopters converged on the landing site in a pre-dawn recovery mission.
Brazilian Marcos Pontes
Marcos Pontes, a 43-year-old Brazilian Air Force pilot, fulfilled a childhood dream in becoming the first Brazilian in space. He returned to Earth with American Bill McArthur and Russian Valery Tokarev on board Soyuz.
The crew were pulled from their cramped capsule and allowed to rest in special chairs, swaddled in animal skins and blankets to fend off the early morning chill as they breathed their first fresh air and sipped hot tea.
"I am very happy," Pontes, who had taken a Brazilian soccer team jersey to space with him to bring his team luck in this summer's World Cup, said.
"I want to say: thank you for everything."
He waved a small Brazilian flag and beamed at photographers as he recovered from the landing in Soyuz, which uses parachutes and "soft landing" rockets fired just before it bumps down to slow its helter-skelter descent.
The crew left the space station just three hours earlier. McArthur and Tokarev have been replaced by Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams, the new crew for the orbiting station for the next six months.