A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three space travelers successfully touched down on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan on Tuesday, wrapping up a five-month mission to the International Space Station.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko landed in their Soyuz capsule at about 8:31 a.m. Kazakh time (10:31 p.m. ET Monday).

"It's beautiful," Romanenko radioed right before landing. "It's morning here." [Astronaut Chris Hadfield's 8 Most Amazing Space Moments]

After the landing, all three had smiles on their faces. "That was quite a ride home," Hadfield said.

The trio's return marks the end of the station's Expedition 35, which Hadfield commanded, and the start of Expedition 36. The landing comes just two days after Marshburn and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy performed an unprecedented emergency spacewalk to fix a serious ammonia coolant leak on the outside of the station.

The three spacefliers orbited Earth 2,300 times and logged 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) during their 144 days on the station. Romanenko, Hadfield and Marshburn also witnessed the arrival and departure of a few unmanned cargo ships, including SpaceX's Dragon capsule in March.

Hadfield was the first Canadian commander of the space station,  and he shared his unique perspective on the planet with everyone back on Earth during his time on the orbiting outpost. The astronaut beamed back a series of videos about life in space, including a music video cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," sung as a goodbye to his space-based home.

Cosmic Log: Space station chief returns home a star

Carla Cioffi / NASA

After their landing, spacefliers Chris Hadfield, Roman Romanenko and Tom Marshburn are surrounded by recovery team members in a remote area near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan on Tuesday.

Chris Hadfield via Twitter

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield sent this final picture from the International Space Station: "To some this may look like a sunset. But it's a new dawn," he wrote.

Hadfield sent down his last photo from onboard the $100 billion laboratory on Monday. "Spaceflight finale: To some this may look like a sunset," Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) wrote on Twitter. "But it's a new dawn."

The departing Soyuz left behind three other astronauts to watch over the space station, but they won't be alone for long. Cassidy, Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin will be joined by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA's Karen Nyberg and Russia's Fyodor Yurchikhin when they fly up to the station at the end of the month.

NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to shuttle the space agency's astronauts to and from the space station since the end of the shuttle program in 2011. NASA officials eventually hope to use private spaceships to bring people to and from the orbiting laboratory.

The International Space Station is the size of a five-bedroom house and was constructed by five different space agencies representing 15 different countries. Construction began in 1998, and since 2000 the station has been occupied continuously by crews of cosmonauts and astronauts.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter and Google+. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Space Station's Expedition 35 Mission in Photos
• Astronaut Chris Hadfield Thanks His Fans From Space | Video
• Soyuz Landing Photos: Space Station's Expedition 35 Crew

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

This story was originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 7:35 PM EDT

A NASA astronaut and his two Russian crewmates made the fastest-ever trip to the International Space Station on Thursday, arriving less than six hours after launch.

In the past, it's taken two days for Soyuz spaceships to make the trip from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But mission planners worked out a more efficient procedure that made it possible for the Soyuz to catch up with the station in just four orbits, compared with more than 30 orbits under the previous flight plan.

Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, along with NASA's Chris Cassidy, rocketed into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:43 p.m. ET Thursday (2:43 a.m. Friday local time). "The spacecraft is nominal, we feel great," Vinogradov, the spacecraft's commander, reported as the rocket ascended to orbit.

NASA launch commentator Josh Byerly hailed Thursday's flight, saying that the crew was "on the fast track" to the station.

The six-hour trip lasted roughly as long as an airplane flight from Seattle to Miami. NASA officials say the fast-rendezvous procedure minimizes the time that crew members spend in the Soyuz's close quarters and gets them to the much roomier space station in better shape. The down side is that the three spacefliers had to spend most of the trip sitting elbow to elbow in bulky spacesuits — which might strike a familiar chord for Seattle-to-Miami fliers.

The fast-track technique relies on a complicated round of orbital choreography that was tested three times over the past eight months, using unmanned Russian Progress cargo ships.

Last week, the space station raised its orbit by about a mile and a half (2.5 kilometers) to put it in the correct position for intercepting the Soyuz. The Soyuz had to be launched at just the right moment, to get into just the right orbit at just the right distance behind the station. To catch up with the station at the right time, the Soyuz had to execute a precisely timed series of thruster firings — a task that was made easier by an upgrade to the spacecraft's automated navigation system.

"From a technical point of view, we feel pretty comfortable with this," Cassidy said at a pre-launch news briefing. "All of the procedures are very similar to what we do in a two-day process, and we've trained it a number of times."

Despite all the training, there were some nail-biting moments. At one point during the Soyuz's approach, a Russian mission controller told Vinogradov, "You really need to stay calm and cool." Vinogradov followed through on the advice, guiding the Soyuz to its targeted position at 10:28 p.m. ET.

Two hours after docking, the hatches between the two spacecraft were opened, and the Soyuz trio floated through to greet three other spacefliers who have been living aboard the station since December: Canadian commander Chris Hadfield, NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russia's Roman Romanenko.

"Hey, is anyone home?" Vinogradov joked. The new arrivals received a round of hugs and congratulations, exchanged warm words with loved ones back on Earth via the station's communication link, and finally settled down for rest at the end of a long, long day.

Vinogradov has been on two previous long-duration space missions — to Russia's Mir space station in 1997-1998, and to the International Space Station in 2006. Cassidy, a Navy SEAL, has been to the station once before, during a mission on the shuttle Endeavour in 2009. This is the first spaceflight for Misurkin.

The new crew members will spend five and a half months aboard the orbital outpost. They'll take part in station upkeep as well as scores of scientific experiments. Up to seven spacewalks are planned during their stay, with the first one coming up next month. The next changing of the guard comes in mid-May, when Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to return to Earth.

More about the Soyuz trip:

• Space station shifts orbit for fast trip
• Space trip offers speed, but not comfort
• Fast trip to station is like riding a train

This report includes information from The Associated Press.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:47 PM EDT

Ramil Sitdikov / AFP - Getty Images

NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy gets his spacesuit checked prior to Thursday's launch to the International Space Station. Straps bind Cassidy's knees close to his chest, in the position he'll have to maintain during most of the six-hour trip.

The speedier ride that three spacefliers are taking into orbit on Thursday will get them aboard the roomy International Space Station a lot sooner than on previous Soyuz space missions. It will lower the demand on expensive support teams back on Earth. But there's also an uncomfortable aspect to the shorter flight plan.

That aspect has to do with the Russian-made emergency pressure suits that crew members wear for launch aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. In the past, spacefliers put on the suits several hours before launch, and wore them for about three hours in flight — long enough to perform the early rocket maneuvers. Then they took off the suits and put them away until docking, two days later. During most of the trip, the travelers could stretch out in the orbital module, a roomier area of the Soyuz spacecraft.

The situation is different for NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, the newest crew members to head for the space station. Their trip is taking six hours rather than two days, thanks to a more exacting strategy for orbital navigation. The Soyuz launch from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 4:43 p.m. ET, and arrival at the station is set for 10:31 p.m. ET.

Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station manager, said the flight plan has the benefit of reducing the "amount of time the crew has to spend in a small environment before they get to the ISS." But that six-hour trip will be more intense. 

Long stretch in the suits
The trio will be wearing their Sokol pressure suits as an essential safety measure, to ensure against the kind of catastrophe that killed three unprotected cosmonauts in 1971 when their cabin suffered an air leak. But the suits are notoriously uncomfortable: They're designed to fit snugly into the tight crew seats, where knees are shoved halfway up to the chest. Arm mobility is restricted to being able to hold a stick to poke critical controls. Oxygen is fed into the suits via short hoses from a nearby console.

It takes hours to remove the suits and clean them, and at least an hour to put them back on and verify pressurization. There's not time for all that during a six-hour trip. As a result, the crew members will have to wear the suits for a much longer period that begins before launch and doesn't end until after docking.

"They are definitely going to have to go to a very tolerant mental system to do this," one former NASA astronaut told NBC News. The spaceflier, who has experience with Soyuz hardware and the Sokol spacesuit, spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak out publicly.

"My first thought was, 'Oh my God, how will they do this!!!" the astronaut said in an email. "If they let the confined/claustrophobic feeling in, it can escalate quickly. If they do not get excellent cooling, which is hard to get, curled up in the seat, it could be very bad. At best this will be terribly uncomfortable to say the least, and I would expect worse, especially given that Cassidy is pretty tall. ... My personal thinking is that this is going too far and even if they get through it this time, I would not think it reasonable as a general technique."

Not 'a big deal'
Cassidy told CollectSpace's Robert Pearlman in an interview that he could tolerate the trip.

"I'm a little bit taller than is comfortably seated in the Soyuz” Cassidy acknowledged, but he said he and his crewmates planned to ease out of their seats and straighten their legs while continuing to wear their spacesuits. "After a couple of hours strapped into that seat tightly, it is really, really nice to stretch your legs out," he explained.

Several retired astronauts seconded Cassidy's view.

"I don't really remember suit comfort being a big deal on my flight," Ed Lu, who was the first American to ride a Soyuz to the space station after the 2003 Columbia disaster, told NBC News via email. "We were out of our suits after 2 revs [revolutions], so what we are talking about here is just an additional 2 revs."

Leroy Chiao, who rode a Soyuz to orbit and back in 2004, agreed in an email: “While the position one is required to be in for being strapped in the seat is not comfortable, I would opt for day-1 rendezvous. Once in orbit, the crew can loosen their straps a bit and move their legs a little. Shifting around helps relieve some of the discomfort."

It’s not just a matter of NASA employees loyally proclaiming their agreement. Private spaceflight participant Greg Olsen, who took his Soyuz trip in 2005, voiced a similar view in an email: “Strictly speaking for myself, I would have been willing to keep the Sokol suit on for a 10-hour period if we docked at the station in that time. It would be more uncomfortable, but not unbearable, to do this.”

Space toiletry
Cassidy told CollectSpace that the Russians found a way for crew members to relieve themselves while still inside the suits. "We wind up being in the vehicle for a very, very long time, and people just need to use the toilet eventually," he said, "so we'll open the hatch and have access to the [orbital module] and be allowed to take our suits not completely off, but enough to do any business we need to take care of."

The nature of this "relief tube" remains obscure. Although cosmonauts are often photographed posing in front of their transfer bus for a re-enactment of Soviet space pioneer Yuri Gagarin's "peeing on the tires" ceremony, it's hard to see how they are actually attaining access to allow for urination. Demonstration videos of cosmonauts donning Sokol suits in orbit show clear views of the crotch area, and no openings are visible in the appropriate anatomical regions.

Olsen described the only available method for such relief that he ever was offered. "We all wear 'Huggie' diapers and most have peed at least once shortly after launch,” he said. "The Russians give everyone enemas, so that's not an issue, even for the two-day flight, in most cases."

Perhaps the long stretch in a spacesuit will bring the full truth to light: How do you get relief in orbit?

Update for 6:45 p.m. ET: It turns out that the Sokol suit does indeed provide an opening for spacefliers who have to go, but it’s hidden modestly behind a fabric flap. Here’s how it’s described on Suzy McHale’s RuSpace website: 

"There is a 'big appendix' in the envelope (for the spacesuit donning) and a 'small appendix' in the lower part (for urination). The 'appendices' are made of rubberized cotton fabric and are pressurized by means of two rubber tight plaits. ... In the 'small appendix' area there is a physiological opening in the shell which is secured by lacing it up and covered by a fabric flap with Velcro fastener."

More about the Soyuz mission:

• New space station crew set for 6-hour ride
• Space station shift makes fast trip possible
• Fast trip to space station is like riding a train

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA Mission Control, where he carried the title of Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer — RGPO, pronounced "Arr-Jeep-O." In that capacity he sat in the center of Mission Control's front row, down in the legendary "trench" of space maneuvering specialists.

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:11 PM EDT

Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters

A police helicopter flies next to the Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft as it is transported to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 26. The Soyuz will carry NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy along with Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin to the International Space Station.

For more than 30 years, Russian spaceships have taken two days to dock with their target — but on Thursday, the travel time for a Soyuz capsule carrying three spacefliers to the International Space Station is being trimmed to six hours.

Has the Soyuz suddenly become speedier? Not really.

The Soyuz itself won't fly any faster when it's sent into space at 4:43 p.m. ET from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It won't have any fundamentally new or improved guidance and navigation system. "All the systems of the vehicle are the same, but the work is more intense," Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, the Soyuz's commander, said last week during a news briefing. "There are no new systems or modes in the vehicle, but the coordination work of the crew should be better."

This faster flight plan is possible only because someone else is doing the real work. The space station itself has shifted its position to be nearer to the Soyuz when that spacecraft goes into orbit. It is quite literally moving itself right in front of the speeding Soyuz.

The rapid rendezvous procedure has already been tested twice with robotic supply flights, but this is the first time it's been used with a crewed spacecraft. If it works, the crew should be docking with the station at 10:31 p.m. ET Thursday, taking the fastest ride to an orbital destination since NASA's Skylab missions, 40 years ago.

Hunter and hunted
Chasing down a target in the trackless void of space is not as simple as merely catching sight of it and thrusting towards it. The inflexible rules of orbital mechanics — motion along orbital paths — demand precise timing of critical course changes on the part of the vehicle that's doing the chasing.

For any space rendezvous, the first critical time is the moment when the chaser’s launch pad passes below the target’s circular orbit. If the chaser is launched during this moment and heads in a direction parallel to the target's orbital course, it winds up more or less in the same orbital plane as the target. That's the "planar window" for a launch.

But there's another critical timing requirement, having to do with how far ahead the target is when the chaser enters orbit. The target could be at any point in the circular path it follows around Earth, but it's important to choose the right point for launching the chaser.

Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters

The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft is transported from its assembly hangar to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 26.

The numbers give you an idea of the scale of the problem: The space station travels in a circular orbit that averages around 224 miles (360 kilometers) in altitude, and the chaser spacecraft are usually launched into initial orbits averaging around 143 miles (230 kilometers). That lower orbit is faster, both because gravity is slightly stronger there, and because the radius is smaller, which makes each circuit shorter.

For that difference in average altitude, a typical chaser spacecraft will catch up with the station at a rate of 560 mph (900 kilometers per hour). So if the chaser starts out 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) behind the station in its orbit, it will take about 10 hours to overtake the station. If it’s 16,800 miles (27,000 kilometers) behind, it would take 30 hours. And it might be even farther.

Flexibility is key
If you have a long period of time available for making your rendezvous — say, one or two days — you have more flexibility for launch opportunities, even if your chaser spacecraft starts out lagging far behind the station. Mission designers prefer to pick launch days on which the lag falls within a certain range. If it’s relatively far away, the chaser stays lower and faster for a longer period, to make up the lag. If the target is not so far away, the crew flies their ship higher sooner, to slow down the approach rate and arrive at the target at the same desired time.

The fast-rendezvous scenario, in contrast, has very little flexibility. The Soyuz has only a few hours to vary its altitude in order to accommodate a range of possible target distances. The range of acceptable distances between the chaser spacecraft and the space station is known as the "phase window." For a fast rendezvous, the phase window shrinks from what's typically about half of each orbit to as little as 5 percent of each orbit.

There are only a few launch opportunities when the precise time of the planar window also falls within the narrow slot of the phase window. That makes it harder to select an appropriate launch date for a fast rendezvous.

The job was easier back in the '60s, for the early rendezvous missions conducted by NASA and the Soviets. That's because those missions involved launching the target satellite first, and then launching the chaser no more than a few hours later. In such cases, the lag distance for the chaser's launch could be customized to fit the short range for a quick docking.

These days, the only way to approximate that required narrow slot in the sky is to have the International Space Station do an engine burn. This can push the station ahead or behind in its orbit, so that it happens to be at the proper distance at precisely the time when the Soyuz is launched.

That critical orbital maneuver took place a week ago: On March 21, a Progress cargo craft attached to the station fired its thrusters for 11 minutes and 13 seconds, pushing its orbital altitude from 253.5 to 255 miles (408 to 410.5 kilometers). It's just a mile and a half, but it's enough to ensure that the station will be in the right place, assuming that the Soyuz launches at the right time.

For all the virtuosity of the cosmonauts in their steering, the factor that makes the briefer trip at all possible is the target generously maneuvering itself right into the chaser’s sights. And for every quick rendezvous in the future, by Russian or American or other orbital vehicles, the same elaborate target line-up will be required.

More about orbital hookups:

• Fast trip to space station is like riding a train
• SpaceX Dragon splashes down with cargo
• Russian cargo ship reaches station after quick trip

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA Mission Control, where he carried the title of Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer — RGPO, pronounced "Arr-Jeep-O." In that capacity he sat in the center of Mission Control's front row, down in the legendary "trench" of space maneuvering specialists.

Roscosmos / NASA TV

A Russian recovery team opens up the hatch of a Soyuz spacecraft after its landing in Kazakhstan early Saturday local time. The capsule carried a U.S.-Russian crew back to Earth from the International Space Station.

By Miriam Kramer
Space.com

A Soyuz spacecraft has safely landed on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan, returning an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to Earth after a nearly five-month mission on the International Space Station.

The Soyuz space capsule touched down at about 11:11 p.m. ET Friday, which was early Saturday at the landing site. The spacecraft brought NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin home after 142 days in space. The trio was greeted by freezing temperatures after exiting the spacecraft.

"They've landed. Expedition 34 is back on Earth," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during live commentary.

Originally, the international crew was to leave the orbiting laboratory on Thursday, but freezing rain and foggy weather on the ground prevented them from returning home. Weather conditions improved on Friday, leading to a smooth undocking; however, a bank of clouds hampered visibility in the landing zone, complicating the Russian search and recovery team's task.

During their stay aboard the station, the three spacefliers orbited the Earth 2,304 times, traveling nearly 61 million miles (98,169,984 kilometers). This was Novitskiy and Tarelkin's first trip to space, and the second for Ford. [See photos from Expedition 34 space mission]

The three crew members were on board to see the docking of the unmanned Dragon capsule — owned and operated by private spaceflight firm SpaceX — at the beginning of March. A month before, the crew participated in the docking and undocking of a Russian Progress supply capsule.

NASA TV

The International Space Station is seen in a video view from a departing Russian Soyuz craft.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin leave three other crew members on board the space station. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn said their goodbyes to the departing trio earlier in the day. Ford passed the commander's role to Hadfield, putting a Canadian in charge of the station for the first time.

Hadfield, Romanenko and Marshburn will not be the sole residents of the station for long. Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy are expected to arrive at the station on March 28. If all goes as planned, it will mark the first time a Soyuz capsule has delivered a station crew to the International Space Station in one day. Russia's Federal Space Agency tested the one-day flight profile during unmanned Progress cargo ship deliveries to the space station.

NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz capsules to transport astronauts to and from low Earth orbit since the retirement of the agency's shuttle program in 2011. In the future, NASA officials plan to use on privately built spacecraft to carry people and cargo to and from the space station.

The $100 billion laboratory was built by space agencies representing Japan, Canada, Europe, the United States and Russia. International crews of astronauts have occupied the station continuously since 2000.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

• Space Station's Expedition 35 Mission in Photos
• Russia's Manned Soyuz Space Capsule Explained (Infographic)
• What It's Like to Ride Russia's Soyuz Spaceship | Video

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 15, 2013 8:40 PM EDT