Late Sunday evening, the astronauts strapped themselves inside a Russian Soyuz capsule and flew away from their orbital outpost on a return trip to Earth, wrapping up their five-and-half-month expedition, which began in May. The capsule made a parachute landing on the frozen steppe of Kazakhstan, northeast of Arkalyk, at just 85 seconds before 0500 UTC.

"It's been an honor and a privilege to spend 165 days up here," the US astronaut Reid Wiseman said during a change-of-command ceremony broadcast via NASA Television from aboard the space station on Saturday. "With that said, I'm looking forward to heading home."

Maxim Suraev, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the now-former commander of the International Space Station (ISS), and the 38-year-old German flight engineer Alexander Gerst, an astronaut for the European Space Agency, joined Wiseman for the return to Earth. The trio had blasted off together on their voyage to the space station aboard the same capsule on May 28.

"It's not easy to part from the station," the three exiting crew members radioed to Russian flight controllers as the Soyuz slipped away from its berthing port for the planned three-and-a-half-hour trip, according to a translator.

'Most complex machine'

A partnership of 15 nations owns and operates the ISS, a research laboratory worth $100 billion (80 billion euros) that orbits about 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Earth. In October, the American Wiseman and the German Gerst exited the ISS to perform maintenance on its exterior.

"They say this is the most complex machine that humanity has ever built," Gerst, a bit of a celebrity as Germany's 11th astronaut ever, had said during Saturday's ceremony. "Even after half a year onboard, it is impossible for me to fathom how complex it is to actually operate this machine. What I did see and what I am sure of is this is the finest example of teamwork that I've ever seen in my life."

New commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore of NASA stayed onboard with Elena Serova and Alexander Samoukutyaev, the Russian cosmonauts who arrived with him six weeks ago. The replacement crew scheduled to join them - cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti - should launch on November 23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

mkg/jm (Reuters, AFP, dpa)