U.S. astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, right, and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin smile arriving at the airport in the Kazakh capital Astana for the ride back to Star City, the cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, Sunday, May 4, 2003. Photo by AP
Two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut returned to Earth, off-target but OK, from the international space station Sunday in a cramped Russian capsule. The landing site was about 287 miles southwest of the target in the isolated steppes of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. Russian spotters found the capsule north of the Aral Sea after a more than two-hour search.