Capsule with South Korean astronaut docks
KOROLYOV, Russia (AP) - April 10, 2008 The Soyuz TMA-12 craft carrying Yi So-yeon, a South Korean
bioengineer, and cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko hooked
up with the orbiting station two days after its launch from the
Baikonur cosmodrome.
"The docking went on as scheduled in automatic mode," Mission
Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.
The flight was the first mission for all three space travelers.
South Korea paid Russia $20 million for Yi's flight.
Ko San, a mathematician, was originally supposed to fly on the
Soyuz. He was relegated to the backup crew in March after he was
accused of removing technical materials from a cosmonaut training
center library without authorization. Yi, Ko's backup, replaced him
on the primary crew.
The mission commander, Volkov, is the first second-generation
astronaut or cosmonaut to reach space.
Volkov's father, Alexander Volkov, is a decorated cosmonaut from
the Soviet era. On his last journey, he left Earth as a Soviet
citizen and returned as a citizen of the new Russian Federation,
following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Volkov and Kononenko are both scheduled to spend six months as
part of the orbiting station's crew. They will join American
astronaut Garrett Reisman, who arrived last month on the U.S. space
shuttle Endeavour.
Yi is to return to Earth on April 19 along with two of the
station's other current occupants, American astronaut Peggy Whitson
and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko.