Two exhausted Russian cosmonauts emerged smiling from their Soyuz space capsule on to the parched steppes of Kazakhstan on Thursday, after the worst six months in space since humans first went into orbit.

Commander Vasily Tsibliyev and engineer Alexander Lazutkin drank some water and then surrendered to medical tests. During their tenure of the 11-year-old Russian Mir space station, they endured an oxygen system failure, a fire, a coolant leak, a near-calamitous collision with a cargo ship they were trying to park, loss of oxygen, a space ship out of control and a power shutdown.

As they tried to put the problems right, things went on going stubbornly wrong. An accidental computer shutdown led to another near tragedy. In addition, Commander Tsibliyev, aged 43, began to have what looked suspiciously like heart trouble.

They left behind two Russian replacements, the British-born astronaut and astrophysicist Michael Foale, aged 40, who will not be relieved until late September, an oxygen-generating system which had failed once more, and the threat of drinking water being contaminated by the coolant leak.

Commander Tsibliyev told the three crew members remaining on Mir: ``I hope that everything bad that we've had will leave with us.''

Back on earth, he smiled broadly as he emerged from the Soyuz capsule.

``What other feelings could we have -- just happy to be back,'' he said. But he faced immediate bad news, kept from him while he was in space, about the death of his stepfather five months ago.

He will also face tough questions about what went wrong in orbit and may have a problem with his accounts. Cosmonauts have contracts with incentive bonuses -- reported to be $100 for each day in orbit, and $1,000 for each space walk. But they also have `maluses' -- they lose money when things go badly.

They have been publicly criticised, not least by President Boris Yeltsin who talked of ``human error'' in space. But they have been supported by the English-language daily, the Moscow Times, which said Commander Tsibilyev had ``helped keep the orbital battlewagon going six years past its intended expiration date in conditions of terrifying uncertainty. His bosses should call it even and give him a hero's welcome''.

It will be diificult for Anatoly Solovyov, aged 49, and his flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov, aged 43, to get things shipshape again. Commander Solovyov has already flown four Mir missions, logged 456 days in orbit and walked in space nine times.

Today he and his crew will begin to examine the Spektr module, deserted since it was punctured by a collision with an unmanned cargo ship on June 25.

The operation will involve several sorties: the crew will move the Soyuz capsule to a new docking position, where it will serve as an emergency lifeboat. They will then move an unmanned Progress cargo spacecraft which has been `parked' alongside, and dock that. It will serve as a kind of waste skip before being dispatched to burn up over the ocean in October.

The Observer News Service

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.