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.
