US-Russian Astronauts Land Safely in Kazakhstan: NASA

The crew of Expedition 34 landed their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft in the steppe of Kazakhstan, northeast of the remote town of Arkalyk Friday night around 11:08 p.m. EST, NASA announced.

"They've landed. Expedition 34 is back on Earth," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during a live commentary, NBCnews reported.

The astronauts - Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy - had to spend an extra night in space as bad weather in Kazakhstan prevented them from landing early.  The astronauts spent 144 days aboard the International Space Station.

The undocking of the Expedition 34 marks its ending and beginning of Expedition 35, which will be commanded by Chris Hadfield from Canadian Space Agency. He will be on the Space Station until May with Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko.

On Wednesday, Ford ceremonially handed the controls of the Space Station to Chris Hadfield.

On March 28, Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy, Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are expected to join Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko.

NASA's shuttle program closed in 2011, after which it has relied on the Soyuz capsules made by Russia to send and receive astronauts from low Earth orbit. NASA says that in the future it will be using privately built spacecraft to transport crew and cargo, NBCnews reported. The International Space Station is a $100 billion facility built jointly by space agencies of the U.S., Europe, Canada, Russia and Japan.