ASTANA, May 4: A US-Russian crew stranded in space by the shuttle tragedy were found alive and well on Sunday after losing radio contact on re-entry and landing 500km off target in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

The Americans Ken Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russia’s Nikolai Budarin had already had to extend a three-month stay on the International Space Station to almost six after the loss of the American space shuttle Columbia in February.

When they were finally brought back to Earth in a Russian Soyuz module, they were out of contact and so far off target they had to wait over two hours to be located by anxious rescuers scouring the Central Asian steppes in planes and helicopters.

The crew landed in a remote spot north of the Aral Sea, almost 500km short of their target— an unusually big miss.—Reuters