Cosmonauts Sergei Zaliotin and Alexander Kalery landed aboard their Soyuz TM-30 capsule near the town of Arkalyk in the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.

Dropping to Earth under a giant parachute, the re-entry module bounced several times before settling down at 0044 GMT.

Kalery told AFP it was "the most difficult" landing of his three space missions so far.

The capsule "bounced up and down a few times on the ground like a rubber ball," he said.

The two cosmonauts were said to be in "very good" health after receiving medical checks.

They were transported by helicopter to the Kazakhstan town of Astana where they gave a news conference before flying on to Moscow.

Zaliotin told journalists in Astana that the Mir space station was "in very good condition" and that the pair had "succeeded in the most important objective of finding and plugging the air leak" which was discovered aboard the space station last spring.

Prior to the mission, the air leak had been slowly reducing the pressure inside Mir.

The cosmonauts switched Mir to automatic pilot before leaving on Thursday.

Their expedition, the 28th aboard Mir, could be the last as the private company, MirCorp, which runs the space station, has not found the finance needed to ensure its survival.

Russia might be obliged to destroy the veteran orbiter in October, if no cash is found.

But Kalery told the news conference that "everything was in good working order" on Mir and that it would be a mistake to shut the space station down.

Mir, which has been in orbit around the earth for 14 years, could last another two or three years if funding is found, according to experts.

Last month MirCorp signed a protocol with a private Italian company, Itali-Mir, which committed itself to finding 20 million dollars (21 million euros) to fly an Italian to Mir.

A first tranche of one million dollars was to have been provided by mid-June, but the cash has still not been released, according to sources.

MirCorp is also counting on a space tourism plan under which visitors would spend a week in orbit with two Russian cosmonauts for 30 million dollars.