The Russian Soyuz spacecraft has landed successfully along with the three astronauts who oversaw the final assembly stage of a $100 billion space station. It landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan as planned along with Russian Oleg Kotov, NASA's Timothy Creamer and Japan's Soichi Noguchi. It touched down at 0725 Moscow time (0325 GMT) according to Russia's Mission Control.

It was confirmed that it was a soft landing and it was witnessed by a lot of spectators. It was under close watch as the spacecraft entered the atmosphere at a height of 99.9 km (62 miles) above Egypt. It landed above the Kazakh steppe.

The astronauts had left in December for the 16-nation International Space Station (ISS). They conducted a series of experiments and also completed the station, which was under construction for more than a decade.

Igor Ushakov, Director of the Moscow-based Institute of Medical and Biological Problems confirmed that the astronauts arrived safely and he was very happy with the successful landing.

Oleg Kotov’s seven year old son Dmitry was also very excited as he watched the landing from Mission Control with his mother.

Russia also announced earlier this year that it will stop space tourism flights to free capacity for ISS flights. It confirmed that it plans to double the number of launches to four this year.