[FPSPACE] Korean astronaut slated to sing in space

[Peter Pesavento]

>From Agnecy France Presse:

 

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/First_Korean_astronaut_to_sing_in_s_04072008.ht
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First Korean astronaut to sing in space

Published: Monday April 7, 2008

 

South Korea's first astronaut said Monday on the eve of her launch to the
International Space Station (ISS) that she will celebrate arrival in space
by singing for her fellow crew.

"We will have food on April 12 on the Day of Cosmonauts and I will sing but
it's a secret what is the song," Yi So-Yeon, 29, said at a press conference
at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where she is set to blast off on
Tuesday.

Yi, who has listed singing as one of her hobbies, said her first reaction on
reaching the ISS would be to cry out: "Wow!"

She also told reporters that she hoped people in North Korea would share in
the "triumph" of her mission, which starts Tuesday when she blasts up into
space on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

A South Korean space official said that Yi's 12-day mission would cost South
Korea around 20 million dollars (12.8 million euros) and that he hoped the
flight would help further his country's manned space flight ambitions.

An official committee headed by Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Russian
space agency Roskosmos, gave official approval Monday for the mission by Yi
and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko.

The three astronauts spoke to the press from behind a glass screen at the
Hotel Cosmonaut in Baikonur as they are being held in quarantine for fear of
being contaminated ahead of their space flight.

Russians celebrate Cosmonaut Day on April 12, the day Soviet hero Yury
Gagarin became the first man in space, in 1961. Yi, Volkov and Kononenko
will be blasting off from the same launch pad as Gagarin.

The Baikonur cosmodrome was built on the arid plains of Kazakhstan in Soviet
times and Russia has continued to use the site under a rental deal since
Kazakhstan became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991.