Moscow - The Soyuz craft carrying South Korea's first female
astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts docked at the International
Space Station (ISS) at 15.00 GMT on Thursday.
After over two days flying aboard the cramped capsule, South
Korea's Yi So Yeon planned to treat her colleagues to a feast of
Asian specialities, including a de-bacterized sample of the classic
pickle cabbage dish kimchi.
Yi, who lists singing along with Tae Kwon Do among her hobbies,
said she would honour the anniversary of Russia Yuri Gragarin's first
space venture Saturday with a performance.
'I hope the Russian and American guys will like my singing,' she
said at a news conference concluding her one-year of training at the
Star City cosmonaut training centre near Moscow.
Bio-engineer Yi is to conduct 18 scientific experiments during her
12-day mission.
South Korea paid about 20 million dollars for her mission, which
it hopes will kick-start its manned space programme.
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and US astronaut Peggy
Whitson will accompany Yi back to earth ending their six month stay
orbit on the space station.
The return crew will land back on the Central Asian steppes near
the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome, which has been leased from
Kazakhastan since Soviet times.
Remaining on the space station are Oleg Kononenko and Sergei
Volkov, the son of former cosmonaut Alexander Volkov who was on the
left on the last space mission form the USSR to return to a changed
geopolitical map after 1991. Both Russians are first timers in space.
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