Pictures: Astronauts Land On Earth After 204 Days In Space, 3264 Orbits of Earth

They escaped unharmed but the failed launch was the first such incident in Russia's post-Soviet history and a new setback for the country's once proud space industry./ AFP IMAGE

This had forced the pair to make an emergency landing./ AFP IMAGE

The trio's launch on December 3 was the first after a Soyuz rocket carrying Russia's Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague failed in October just minutes after blast-off./ AFP IMAGE

NASA astronaut Anne McClain, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos, and Canadian Space Agency record-holder David Saint-Jacques touched down on the steppes of Kazakhstan at around 0248 GMT./ NASA IMAGE

Almaty: The first crew to blast off to the International Space Station following a launch accident that deepened doubts over Russia's space programme returned to earth on Tuesday./ AFP IMAGE