Olympic torch, crew land safely after space station stay

• Unlit Olympic torch spent 4 days aboard the International Space Station
• For those days%2C the space station was home to 9 astronauts%2C cosmonauts for 1st time since 2009
• An Olympic torch first went into space in 1996 aboard the shuttle Atlantis

A Russian cosmonaut, two astronauts and a very unusual piece of sports memorabilia all landed safety Monday in Kazakhstan after their orbital stays at the International Space Station.

A Russian Soyuz craft carrying Expedition 37 Cmdr. Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg of the USA and Luca Parmitano of Italy parachuted to a landing around 8:49 a.m. local time, carrying with them an unlit Olympic torch emblematic of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. The Kazak time zone is 11 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

The crew had been in space for 166 days.

The symbolic Olympic torch, which initially had been carried lit aboard the Soyuz rocket that blasted it into space, spent a long weekend above the Earth, arriving Thursday when three new crew members arrived. Aboard the space station, the torch was not lighted because it would have consumed precious oxygen and been a threat to the crew.

New Cmdr. Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy relayed the torch outside the station Saturday during a spacewalk, the first ever for an Olympic torch. The torch had flown into space once before — in 1996 aboard the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis for the Atlanta Summer Olympics.

The undocking, about three hours before landing, marked the end of Expedition 37 and the start of Expedition 38 under the command of Kotov.

Yurchikhin passed the helm of the station over to Kotov during a change of command ceremony Sunday before he, Nyberg and Parmitano boarded their Soyuz capsule and the hatches between the spacecraft were closed.

The capsule descended through brilliantly clear skies under a parachute.

Nyberg drew accolades before her launch in the spring as an astronaut-mom who worked to keep her professional and personal life in balance.

Within 10 minutes of touchdown, Yurchikhin was extracted from the capsule and carried to a reclining chair, where he was put under a blanket against the minus-4 (25º F) chill and began adjusting to the pull of gravity after almost a half year of weightlessness.

The torch, in a protective bag, was brought out and given to Yurchikhin to hold after it was unwrapped. He waved it a little and smiled.

Nyberg was given dark glasses to protect her eyes against the intense sunlight. Parmitano, the last out, appeared thrilled, grinning broadly and pumping his fists.

All three of the Expedition 37 crew were taken for tests at a medical tent at the landing site, then flown to the city of Karaganda for a welcoming ceremony.

Six people remain aboard the space station: Russians Oleg Kotov, Sergei Ryazansky and Mikhail Tyurin; NASA's Michael Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio; and Koichi Wakata of Japan.

Contributing: The Associated Press