After a six-month trek in orbit, three crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) returned to Earth early on Wednesday morning, just 23 minutes after sunrise at 7:13 am local time (0113 UTC).

The trio undocked from the space station nearly three and a half hours before touchdown, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.

"Everything went very smoothly, very normally," said NASA spokesman Rob Navias.

NASA's Jeff Williams returned to Earth as the US record holder for time spent in orbit, logging 534 days in space over four missions. Williams and his two Russian colleagues, Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka logged 117.2 million kilometers in space, circling the Earth 2,752 times before landing on target in the south central steppes of Kazakhstan.

(DW)