GRAVITY AGAIN

Russia's celebrity cosmonaut, Valery Polyakov, came home this morning after a record 439 days in space, landing on a snowy steppe in Kazakhstan at 7 a.m. (11 p.m. EST Tuesday). Fit, trim and ready with high-fives for earth-bound colleagues, the 52-year-old physician exclaimed "It's Mother Earth" as he and two other cosmonauts emerged from their Soyuz descent capsule. Left behind: a new three-person crew on thespace station Mir, including U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard. (He aims to break the more modest American record of 84 straight days in space.)