Korean Crew Launched into Space by a Soyuz FG Rocket
Earlier today at 11:16 GMT, three individuals – Russian Commander Sergei Volkov and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko launched aboard the ISS Expedition 17—the Soyuz TMA-23, and a female Spaceflight Participant South Korean Yi So. As a guest of the Russian government, 29-year old reserve candidate Yi So-yeo is able to launch through a hefty payment by the Korean Astronaut Program to Russia at the price of 25 million U.S. dollars for her.
This is in agreement to support the first Korean astronaut in space, but I do not know about the guest part—and it makes a guy wonder how much they are going to charge the United States for launching our astronauts when the space shuttles retire, does it not? According to the reports, Yi So-yeo is aboard the Soyuz because Ko San, originally scheduled to fly, had breached regulations surrounding his removal of books from the Russian training centre which disqualified him from the flight. Her mission, once at the International Space Station, is to conduct scientific experiments during her 11-day mission. Launching off the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the world’s oldest space launch pad, it is known as the original launch pad for launching Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, the first human to enter space in 1961.
Located in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan, the Baikonur Cosmodrome is not only the oldest but also the largest operational space launch facility in the area. Leased to Russia by the Kazakh government, it was originally built by the Soviet Union around the late 1950s and is presently managed by the Russian Federal Space Agency after years of decline due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Most of Russia’s launching occurs here, both manned and unmanned, while other military unmanned flights also occur at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
Eventually, the Russian Space Agency became one of the partners in the International Space Station program, with its core space modules Zarya and Zvezda both launched by Proton rockets, later joined by NASA’s Unity Module. Once the initial ISS contract with NASA expired, both NASA and RKA entered into a space contract until 2011. At that time, Roskosmos would sell NASA spots on their Soyuz spacecrafts for about $21 million dollars per person each way, totaling to $42 million per astronaut along with Progress transport flights at $50 million per progress. With this arrangement, RKA will double their manned Soyuz flights to four flights per year, and Progress flights will be eight trips per year beginning in 2008.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 2:19 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
