French Astronaut Returns From Space

France’s first woman astronaut and two Russian crewmates returned to Earth from the orbiting Mir space station.

The Soyuz TM-23 spaceship carrying Claudie-Andre Deshays, Yury Onufrienko and Yury Usachev landed about 60 miles southwest of the city of Akmola in Kazakstan, near Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

Deshays, a 39-year-old rheumatologist and an expert in neuroscience, spent two weeks aboard the Russian space station studying the effects of weightlessness.

Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut, Shannon Lucid, remain aboard the Mir. Lucid is scheduled to return later this month on the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis.