The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, boarding South’s Korea’s first astronaut Yi So-yeon and also commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko, has had a successful depart today at the Baikonur launch facility.

The 29-year-old bio-engineer will have approximately 10 days to oversight a series of scientific tests.

She was chosen out of about 36,000 candidates to participate in the space mission. Although it wasn’t exactly the outcome the South Korean authorities had hoped for, as they had high expectations for their initial candidate, a man who was dismissed for breaking the training protocol twice. Ko San, an expert in artificial intelligent, was the initial candidate.

However, women’s groups all over South Korea are extremely proud with the selection.

According to the Associated Press, the South Korean government has made a $20 million deal with Russia to co-sponsor the flight and ensure Yi’s participation on the trip. She has now become the first Korean to reach space and has used the hype surrounding the event to state her reunification of the Korean peninsula beliefs.

"I hope someday they will be one, and I hope the North Korean people will be happy with my flight," she said during a news conference on Monday.

Yi will return to Earth with Expedition 16 crew members, Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko in their Soyuz TMA-11 on April 19. Expedition 16 launched to the station Oct. 10.

South Korea will thus become the 36th country to send a person into space, and this is just the first step from a more ambitious plan Seoul has for the next 20 years, as they are planning a moon land by 2025, according to their own estimations.

Volkov, age 35, son of cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, is a graduate from the Tambov Air Force Academy for Pilots and has had no previous flights into space. He started out as an air force pilot and began his present activity around December 1997.

Kononenko, age 43, has been preparing in his current profession since June 1996 and is also experiencing his first space mission. He graduated from the Aviation Institute and trained with the crews of Expedition 9 and Expedition 11.

Unlike Yi So-yeon’s rather brief assignment, Volkov and Kononenko are both expected to spend about six months as part of the orbiting station's crew.