Members of the Expedition 6 crew landed in northern Kazakhstan Saturday in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft almost 300 miles short of its targeted landing site.

It took more than three hours for a search plane to find the capsule and report that all aboard the spacecraft appeared well.

The crew includes Ken Bowersox, Nikolai Budarin and Don Pettit. They had spent about 5 and a half months in space aboard the international space station. After the space shuttle Columbia tragedy on Feb. 1, the astronauts told NASA officials to remain focused on finding out what caused the space shuttle to disintegrate over Texas upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

The landing ended a mission that began with their launch on Nov. 23 and their docking to the orbiting laboratory two days later. It marked the first landing of an advanced Soyuz TMA spacecraft, and it was the first time United States astronauts have landed in any Soyuz capsule.

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