FOR an agonising two hours yesterday, two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut returning from the International Space Station went missing, somewhere in Kazakhstan.

Visions of a second disaster, hard on the heels of the space shuttle Columbia in February, were dispelled only when an increasingly frantic search found the men safe and well, but almost 300 miles off course.

“We have radio contact with the crew. Thank God, they are alive and well,” an official at mission control said.

It had been a long and anxious wait after contact with the Soyuz spacecraft was lost during re-entry. Mission control outside Moscow usually bursts into applause when crews touch down safely, but early yesterday it was silent as technicians struggled to understand what was happening and rescue helicopters combed the vast steppe.

On board the Soyuz were two Americans, Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit, and Nikolai Budarin, the Russian. Indirectly they were already victims of the Columbia disaster, because it caused the cancellation of all shuttle flights and trapped them in the space station for three extra months.

With America’s shuttle fleet grounded, the stakes in the landing yesterday could not have been higher. The $95 billion (£63 billion) station is now completely dependent on Russian spacecraft both for delivering food and water and ferrying astronauts to and fro.

Coming home was a simple 3½-hour journey, from undocking from the space station to floating down under a parachute to the designated landing site in Kazakhstan, home of the former Soviet space programme. The Russian capsule appeared to be making a perfect descent when panic struck as ground crew and helicopters waiting at the appointed landing site failed to spot either the bell-shaped craft or its trademark parachutes.

Eventually the helicopters returned to Astana, the Kazakhstan capital, without the crews, leaving the search to fixed-wing aircraft.

“Nervous. Nervous,” Talgat Musabayev, a cosmonaut who was in one of the helicopters, muttered. “This landing was unusual.”

Finally the capsule was spotted 287 miles southwest of the target site, just north of the Aral Sea. The crew had managed to open the hatch and were outside, waving at the relieved search teams.

This was the first time that US astronauts had landed in a foreign spacecraft on foreign soil and the first re-entry for a new Soyuz craft, the TMA-1.

Soyuz spacecraft are largely automatic. All the crew has to do is hold on tight, because the descent is far rougher and more buffeting than in a shuttle, which glides to Earth. About 15 minutes before touchdown, parachutes deploy to slow the descent and then, two seconds before impact, rockets fire to cushion the landing.

Normally the craft is guided to the touchdown site in what the Russians call a “controlled landing”, but yesterday something went wrong. The Soyuz craft instead made a “ballistic” landing, which means, essentially, that it fell like a stone with no guidance, its landing point determined entirely by its speed and angle of re-entry.

This was not dangerous, Russian officials insisted. “We always try for a controlled landing, as it is the most comfortable for the crew, but a ballistic landing of the Soyuz also works and does not harm the astronauts’ health,” Yuri Semyonov, head of the Energiya space construction firm, said.

However, Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian space agency Rosiavakosmos, conceded that there had been only two previous instances when Russian spacecraft had made ballistic landings — one involving a piloted craft and another with an unmanned capsule.

“That is why we were all worried,” Mr Semyonov admitted, “but we definitely will find out the cause. It could be the crew’s actions, the conditions at the start of the re-entry or the onboard systems.”

The deceleration during re- entry on a Soyuz craft can reach seven times the force of gravity, but that experienced yesterday would have been higher still, around nine Gs. This could have have damaged the communications system, explaining why contact was lost.

The capsule ended up on its side and appeared to have been dragged about 40ft by the main parachute after landing. The crew remained inside for 1½ hours until they managed to open the hatch.

All were well, although Mr Pettit was laid on a stretcher inside the rescue helicopter. Officials said that he felt sick and had injured his shoulder.

Captain Bowersox, a US Navy officer, made light of the difficulties. “It’s great to be back on Earth,” he said. “It’s a lot scarier than landing on an aircraft carrier. It was great. Everything worked. Soyuz is very reliable. The landing was actually pretty great.”

Later he told reporters that he and his crewmates had been well aware that they would land short of the touchdown site, but were not too worried. “I was just happy we were down, that everything was safe,” he said. “It was the most beautiful dirt I’ve ever seen.”

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