A Soyuz capsule carrying Nasa's Tim Kopra, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency, and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos, made a safe parachute landing on the steppe near the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan on Saturday 18 June.

The three-man crew departed the station about three hours earlier after spending half a year in Earth's orbit.

The capsule landed on its side, a frequent occurrence in the windy steppe area, after parachuting for 14 minutes. A search and recovery team quickly extracted the trio from the capsule.

Former Army Major Peake, who turned 44 aboard the station, was on a mission for the European Space Agency (ESA) and became the first astronaut wearing a Union Jack flag on his arm. The first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, who travelled on a Soviet spacecraft for eight days in 1991.