He and crew members Fyodor Yuchikhin and Oleg Kotov are scheduled to land near the town of Arkylk in Kazakhstan at 6.37pm Malaysian time.

Unlike the two-day journey to the International Space Station, their return to earth would take less than three-and-a-half hours.

The three will be returning in the Soyuz TMA-10, the spacecraft used in the previous mission in April.

Commander Peggy Whitson, cosmonaut Yuri Malechenko and American Clay Anderson, would remain on the space station.

For their re-entry, the crew would occupy the descent module of the spacecraft.

The Soyuz would activate its systems at 3.15pm Malaysian time and after the go-ahead from flight controllers at Mission Control Centre Moscow, hooks and latches between the spacecraft and the Zarya node on the ISS will be opened.

Soyuz thrusters would be fired to back away from the ISS.

Six minutes after undocking, when the spacecraft is 20 metres away from the station, the separation procedure will be initiated by firing the craft’s rockets for 15 seconds, allowing the Soyuz to begin its departure from the ISS.

Re-entry begins less than two-and-a-half hours later at a distance of about 19km from the station. Here, the Soyuz engines will fire in retrograde (opposite) direction for four-and-a-half minutes.

This will slow the spacecraft down, enabling it to drop out of orbit to begin its fall to Earth.

Less than 30 minutes later, above the first traces of the Earth's atmosphere, the descent module's computers would command the separation of the three modules of the Soyuz.

The orbital module and the instrumentation module would separate from the descent module, shedding about two-thirds of the spacecraft's mass.

The two discarded modules would disintegrate upon re-entry into the atmosphere.

Three minutes after the module separation, the crew will feel the effects of gravity for the first time upon entering the atmosphere, a point called the "entry interface" about 120km above the Earth.

With less than 15 minutes to landing, when the Soyuz is at an altitude of about 10km and travelling about 220 metres per second, a series of parachutes would be deployed.

First, two pilot parachutes will be released, followed by a larger drogue parachute which stretches out over an area of 24 square metres.

Within 16 seconds, the drogue chute would slow the rate of descent to 80 metres per second.

The main parachute measuring 1,000 square metres is the last to emerge, slowing the speed of the descent module to seven metres per second.

When the module falls to an altitude of 12 metres, the vessel prepares for the Soft Landing Engine firing.

One metre above the surface and seconds before touchdown, the six propellant engines of the SLE are fired to soften the impact of the landing, allowing the descent module to touch down at a velocity of about 1.5 metres per second.

As the landing time approaches, a recovery team including Malaysian mission flight surgeon Col Dr Zulkeffeli Mat Jusoh and Russian crew support personnel would be scanning the landing area — a 10km radius of Arkylk, Kazakhstan — in a convoy of Russian military helicopters.

Once the capsule touches down, the helicopters would land nearby. Russian technicians will open the module’s hatch and remove the crew members one at a time.

Within minutes of landing, a portable medical tent would be set up near the capsule for the crew to change out of their launch and entry suits. They would be seated in special reclining chairs near the capsule for initial medical tests and to allow them to re-adapt to Earth's gravity.

As he only spent 11 days in space, Dr Muszaphar is expected to recover much faster than Yuchikhin and Kotov, who both spent six months in microgravity.

Life Sciences programme co-ordinator Prof Dr A. Rahman A. Jamal said this was because the specimens of the experiments conducted at the International Space Station (ISS), particularly on protein crystallisation, cannot withstand strong vibration as the crystals can crack and break.

"We must ensure that the specimens from the bone cells are maintained at 30^oC as they are live cells, and the cancer cells and bacteria at 4oC to ensure that the gene components in the cells remain stable.

"The protein crystals must be maintained at between 4^oC and 10^oC, lest they freeze in extreme cold. To overcome this, the specimens have been placed in temperature-controlled containers."

Rahman said that to protect the specimens from strong vibration, the containers come with padding to absorb the vibration from the impact of the landing.

"According to the astronauts, the least impact we can expect is like that of a car crash and we pray that it will not have any effect on the specimens."

Rahman is confident that the specimens would be safe as the containers bearing them would be placed under or behind the astronauts' seat, as advised by the Russian authorities.

He praised Dr Sheikh Muszaphar for successfully conducting the experiments with ease although they were complicated. This had impressed the Russians.

"The experiments on cancer cells, bone cells, bacteria and protein crystallisation will end at 4am tomorrow. The results of the experiments are much-awaited by the scientist community as conducting research in space is not easy," said Prof Rahman.

Dr Sheikh Muszaphar and Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov are expected to land at 2.37pm (6.37pm Malaysian time) at Arkylk, Kazakhstan, after a journey of three hours and 23 minutes from the time the space capsule undocks from the ISS.

Dr Sheikh Muszaphar had blasted into space on Oct 10 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, to become the first Malaysian in space. He had travelled with American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko in the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft. Whitson and Malenchenko will remain in the ISS for six months.