Craft with 3 aboard inc Muslim astronaut safely down after missing landing site

Space 1. Astronauts hugging each other to say goodbye 2. People in hatch before closing 3. Hatch being closed 4. Various of Soyuz undocking from international space station (ISS) 5. Soyuz undocking behind ISS solar panel 6. Wide of Soyuz, earth in the background Korolev, Russia 7. Wide of Russian mission control centre with screens displaying data UPSOUND (Russian with simultaneous English translation) Official from Moscow station (name unavailable): "It is on the ground and five minutes ago a helicopter landed right next to it." Houston, US 8. Wide of workers at NASA mission control 9. Graphics Korolev, Russia 10. Wide of Russian mission control centre with screens 11. Graphic showing Soyuz landing site STORYLINE Malaysia's first space traveller and two Russian cosmonauts survived a rough descent on Sunday after a technical glitch sent their Soyuz spacecraft on a steeper-than-normal path during their return to Earth, officials said. The spacecraft landed safely and all three were feeling fine, officials said. The landing capsule carrying Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, and Malaysian Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, landed short of the designated landing site, Russia's Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said. The crew was unharmed, he said. The spacecraft deviated from the intended path because of a computer glitch that sent the spacecraft on a steeper-than-usual descent trajectory, the so-called ballistic descent, Lyndin said. The crew were subjected to higher than normal gravity load on their descent, Lyndin added. Russian search and rescue teams quickly located the craft, which landed just under 340 kilometres (about 210 miles) west of the designated landing site near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, NASA reported on its Web site. It said all three crew members were feeling fine. Russian Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov said space officials and experts "experienced a few tense moments," but added that the crew was in good condition. At a news conference at Mission Control he said all crew members had been recovered and they were feeling quite well. Officials said an official commission would investigate the glitch. A similar problem occurred in May 2003 when the crew, Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit, also experienced a steep, off-course landing. It then took salvage crews several hours to locate the spacecraft because of communications problems. Yurchikhin and Kotov were returning home after a six-month stint at the international space station. Sheikh Muszaphar had been at the orbital outpost since October 12. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c6db1b5a0aad4778869e1f27f209e695 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork