BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - (Agence France-Presse) - The first South Korean astronaut was to blast off into space on Tuesday on a historic mission that officials hope will kick-start the Asian economic giant’s manned space program.
Yi So-Yeon, 29, and two Russian cosmonauts were due to take off at 1116 GMT from the same launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where Yury Gagarin, the first man in space, began his famous flight in 1961.
The cosmodrome, which was built in Soviet times and is now leased to Russia, is set in the middle of the arid Kazakh steppes surrounded by wandering camels and dotted with debris from decades of Soviet space exploration.
After docking with the International Space Station, Yi has said she will celebrate the anniversary of Gagarin’s launch on April 12 with a spicy Korean feast and a surprise song for her fellow crew members.
“I hope all the Russian guys and the American guys like my singing!,” Yi joked with reporters last month at the training base in Star City outside Moscow where cosmonauts undergo gruelling tests for space flight.
At a press conference on the eve of her launch, Yi smiled and jumped up and down, waving to friends from behind a glass wall intended to protect astronauts from being contaminated, as stern-faced Russian officials looked on.
She also told reporters that she wanted people in North Korea to be “happy” with her 12-day mission and share in her “triumph” and voiced hope that one day the two halves of her divided peninsula would reunite.
Asked what her first reaction would be on reaching the ISS, Yi said she would cry out: “Like, wow!” At a formal ceremony in Baikonur’s space museum ahead of the launch she left a signature with a big smiling flower.
Her commander on the Russian Soyuz module flight will be Sergei Volkov, son of Alexander Volkov — one of two cosmonauts who blasted off from the Soviet Union and returned to Earth only after the Soviet collapse of December 1991.
The third Soyuz crew member is Oleg Kononenko, also a first-timer in space.
At the heavily-guarded Cosmonaut Hotel in Baikonur in which the space explorers have been staying ahead of the launch, a committee of Russian space officials gave its final approval for the mission on Monday.
“Our people, our country are very happy,” Sim Eunsup, director of the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, said on Sunday as the Soyuz rocket was dragged out of its hangar and lifted into position at launch pad Number One.
“Yi’s flight will form the basis of our manned space program,” he said.
Korea will pay some 20 million dollars for her mission.
Yi was selected last month after engineering student Ko San, who had been due to fly for South Korea, was taken off the mission for breaching rules by taking manuals out of the high-security Star City training base.
A biosystems engineer, Yi will conduct 14 scientific experiments in space and said she hoped her flight would help further the cause of science in South Korea and encourage more Koreans to fly into space.
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