The International Space Station - home to a dozen space travelers only last week - is down to two crew members after Soyuz TMA-15 safely returned to Earth early Dec. 1 with three long-duration Expedition 21 crew members onboard.

The space shuttle Atlantis landed Nov. 27 with seven more - Expedition 21 flight engineer Nicole Stott and the orbiter's original crew of six. That leaves only NASA's Jeff Williams, the Expedition 22 commander, and Maxim Surayev of the Russian space agency to man the space station until another Soyuz arrives in three weeks.

Expedition 21 Commander Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency, Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk and Russian Cosmonaut Roman Romanenko landed at 2:15 a.m. near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. Russian recovery and medical teams met them with off-road vehicles and later drove them to Arkalyk, according to Russian press reports.

De Winne, a Belgian who was the first station commander not from the U.S. or Russia, and his crewmates spent 188 days on the station. They will be replaced in orbit when NASA's Timothy Creamer, Oleg Kotov of Russia, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) arrive Dec. 22 at the ISS on Soyuz TMA-17. The three are scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 20.

International Space Station photo: NASA