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Astronaut William S. McArthur, Jr., NASA Expedition 12 commander and International Space Station science officer, waits onboard a helicopter before transferring to an airplane for a flight back to Moscow from Kustanay, Kazakhstan. The Expedition 12 crew and astronaut Marcos Pontes, Brazilian Space Agency participant, returned to earth on the Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft and landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan on April 9, 2006. Returning on the spacecraft along with McArthur and Pontes was cosmonaut Valery I. Tokarev, Russia’s Federal Space Agency flight engineer and Soyuz commander. Pontes arrived at the station with the Expedition 13 crew on April 1.