South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon is out of the hospital after treatment for injuries she received during the rough landing of her Soyuz vehicle last month. The Korean Times reports that she still has a sore back.
“I’m still wearing a brace, and my doctor said that I must not run, yet. That’s really hard because I love running,” Yi said at a press conference on Friday. She will leave South Korea on Sunday for a mission debriefing in Moscow.
Meanwhile, the man she replaced on the flight, Ko San, denied an earlier report that he was booted from the International Space Station mission for attempting to send classified documents about the Russian space program home to Korea.
“I’m not that stupid to try to steal important documents that way. There were really subtle incidents and Russian officials later agreed they did not matter,” Ko told The Korea Times. “The replacement of astronauts was a very complicated matter because intelligence agencies were involved in it.”
Ko said he was trying to understand how Soyuz’s systems worked so he could participate in the mission safely.
Continue reading ‘South Korea: Yi on the Mend, Ko Says He Didn’t Steal Documents’
Russian technicians have rolled out a Soyuz rocket to the launch pad for an historic liftoff that will send the first South Korean and the first second-generation cosmonaut into orbit.
Yi So-yeon, a South Korean bioengineering student, will join cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko on a Soyuz TMA-12 flight to the International Space Station.
Volkov is the first second-generation space explorer. His father Alexander logged 391 days in space on three flights during the 1980’s and 1990’s. He was on hand Saturday to watch his son’s Soyuz rocket rolled out to the launch pad under a clear blue sky.
Ko San, a 30-year-old computer science engineer, will take kimchi along with him when he flies to the International Space Station next month aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
San, who beat out 36,000 contestants for the honor of becoming South Korea’s first astronaut, is scheduled for an April 8 launch to the orbiting outpost. He will conduct experiments aboard the station for 10 days.
The International Herald Tribune reports that Korean scientists have spent millions of dollars developing kimchi and nine other Korean foods suitable for space travel.
“This will greatly help my mission. When you’re working in space-like conditions and aren’t feeling too well, you miss Korean food,” Ko said. “Since I am taking kimchi with me, this will help cultural exchanges in space.”