Soyuz capsule docks safely with space station
KOROLYOV, Russia -- A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying South Korea's first astronaut docked successfully at the international space station on Thursday.
The Soyuz TMA-12 craft and its passengers — 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.
"Our cosmonauts had no experience but, as you saw, everything went successfully," Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of Federal Space Agency, said at a news conference at Russia's Mission Control in Korolyov just outside Moscow.
Several hours after the docking, when mission engineers made sure the connection was tight, the crew opened the hatches and floated into the station. Yi floated in with a big grin, waving at a camera.
South Korea paid Russia $20 million for Yi's flight, which followed a 2006 competition that drew 36,000 applicants to become the country's first astronaut.
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.
Russian space officials referred to Yi as a space flight "participant," a title reflecting her status as a commercial space traveler.
Pak Hong Yul, the head of South Korea's space agency, sounded somewhat vexed when Russian officials said they were referring to Yi as a "participant" of space flight because of her lack of previous space experience.
"No matter what she is called, she is our first Korean astronaut," Pak snapped.
The Soyuz flight also marked a milestone for the mission commander, Volkov, who became the first second-generation astronaut or cosmonaut to reach space.
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