ARKALYK, Kazakhstan (AP) -- A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying U.S. millionaire scientist Gregory Olsen and a two-man, Russian-American crew hurtled through the Earth's atmosphere and landed early Tuesday in the windswept steppes of Kazakhstan.The bone-jarring descent brought an end to Olsen's space station visit, the third trip by a private citizen to the orbiting laboratory. The Soyuz covered the approximately 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the station to terra firma in just 3 1/2 hours.At 4:19 Moscow time (0019 GMT), the Soyuz fired its engines for about five minutes to slow the capsule as it began moving into the Earth's atmosphere. Less than a half-hour later, somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean Ocean, the landing capsule separated from the section used for docking and the section holding the main propulsion engines, which were to burn up in the atmosphere. The parachutes deployed on schedule to further brake the capsule's descent.Ground officials established radio and visual contact with the craft about five minutes before the scheduled landing around dawn Tuesday on the broad, empty steppes of Kazakhstan, where Russia's manned-space facilities are based. Four search planes and 17 helicopters scrambled to meet the spacecraft.Returning U.S. astronaut John Phillips' wife Laura, monitoring the landing at Russian Mission Control at Korolyov outside Moscow, said her husband was launched into space on his birthday and was returning on hers."I guess it's the best present a person could ask for," she said.Olsen, American astronaut William McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev blasted off from the Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan on October 1 and arrived at the space station two days later. McArthur and Tokarev are to stay aboard for a six-month mission, while Olsen returned with Phillips and Russian Sergei Krikalev, who had been on the space station since April.After landing, the crewmen were to spend two hours undergoing medical checks, then be shuttled by helicopter to a Kazakh staging point and ultimately back to Moscow for further examinations.McArthur and Tokarev are to conduct two spacewalks during their time aboard the station, as well as an array of scientific experiments, medical tests and routine maintenance.Olsen, who spent two years in training and paid US$20 million (euro16 million) for his trip, conducted experiments during his visit, including one to determine how microbes that have built up on the space station are affected by flight, particularly if their rate of mutation has been impacted.In addition, he took videos and photos and "enjoy[ed] being here, floating free in space," he told The Associated Press by e-mail last week.A Russian Space Agency official said that Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto was in line to be the world's fourth space tourist, following Olsen, fellow American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth. Alexei Krasnov, the head of manned programs, said in an interview posted on the agency's Web site that the Japanese could face a challenge by another American, whom he did not name."Whoever is better prepared will fly," he said, adding that the next space tourist probably would not travel to the station until autumn 2006.The Soyuz spacecraft and Russia's unmanned Progress cargo ships have been the station's lifeline since the U.S. space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The shuttle program was suspended for more than two years; the shuttle Discovery flew to the station in July, but problems with its insulation raised doubts about when the next shuttle would go into space.Russia's space program, despite chronic funding problems, has enjoyed the image of reliability in recent years. But that reputation was tarnished over the past week by a pair of failed unmanned missions, including the loss of the estimated euro173 million (US$210 million) CryoSat European satellite due to the failure of a Russian Rokot booster.That dealt a major blow to the European Space Agency, which had hoped to conduct a three-year mapping of polar sea ice and provide more reliable data for the study of global warming.Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.