Russian cosmonauts, left to right, Yuri Baturin, Talgat Musabayev and Nikolai Budarin smile as they look through an open hatch of their landing capsule shortly after landing near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakstan Tuesday, Aug. 25, 1998. The three Russian cosmonauts landed in the Kazak desert on Tuesday after a flawless descent from the Mir space station.ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cosmonauts land after mission to Mir

Web posted August 26, 1998

Associated Press

ARKALYK, Kazakstan -- Three Russian cosmonauts, including a former aide to President Boris Yeltsin, landed in the Kazak desert today after a flawless descent from the Mir space station.

The Soyuz TM-27 spacecraft touched down at 9:23 a.m. Moscow time near the town of Arkalyk in north-central Kazakstan. It carried crew commander Talgat Musabayev and his colleague Nikolai Budarin, who spent 207 days on board the Mir, and former presidential advisor Yuri Baturin, who spent 12 days there performing scientific experiments.

``The landing spot is good, smooth, there is a swift east wind blowing and the weather is fair, Musabayev was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Russia has a 20-year lease agreement on the former Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakstan and Russian cosmonauts also use the Kazak steppe as their landing site.

Shortly after the landing, Yeltsin sent a telegram congratulating the crew on a successful mission.

The three cosmonauts will be flown to Star City, a cosmonauts training center near Moscow, for a post-flight rehabilitation that usually takes about a month.

Cosmonauts Gennady Padalko and Sergei Avdeyev, who traveled to the Mir with Baturin, remain aboard the space station and are scheduled to return to Earth in February.