UPDATE: Bad Weather Delays Astronauts' Return To Earth, Three Spacemen Remain In Orbit

Due to inclement weather, the three astronauts scheduled to return to Earth from the International Space Station Thursday night were forced to spend another night in space.

Two Russian and one American astronaut will reenter Earth after 142 days in outer space.

Fog and freezing rain prevented crews on the steppes of Kazakhstan from being able to reach the landing site by helicopter, forcing the return of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to be delayed by a day, Retuers reported. 

The Soyuz spacecraft, which has been relied on to transport people to and from the space station since NASA retired the space shuttle program in 2011, will ferry NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelki back to Earth Friday night.

The Soyuz is intended to touchdown on late Friday night in Kazakhstan.

Landing is now scheduled to occur on Friday (March 15) at 11:06 p.m. EST, NASA officials said. 

It will take just over three hours for the craft to return to Earth.

This is not the first time bad weather has delayed the return of the Soyuz, Space.com reported. In 2009, snowy conditions at the landing site forced another Soyuz craft to remain in space for an additional day.

Viewers can watch the landing of the spacecraft here.

On Wednesday a change of command ceremony took place aboard the space station. U.S. astronaut Ford was in charge of the Expedition 34 mission. Expedition 35 began seamlessly, with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield taking command.

Hadfield will man the space station with a skeleton crew of two others until three additional astronauts arrive later this month.

Hadfield is the first Canadian to take command of the space station.

A video of Hadfield playing guitar aboard the space station can be seen below.