Soyuz TMA-12 launched yesterday at 11:16:39 UTC with Expedition 17 and Visiting Crew-14 (South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon). Somewhat surprisingly there are Koreans living in Baikonur and Kazakhstan (courtesy of Joseph Stalin).
Yi So-yeon (I think Yi is her surname, if last names are presented first in Chinese fashion) has the usual intimidating array of qualifications (a biosystems engineer) and is a tae-kwon-do expert. She seems very enthusiastic.
Sergei Volkov is the son of a cosmonaut, Aleksandr Volkov, and is the first second-generation cosmonaut to go into space.
“Three Rocketeers For Shenzhou”, Space Daily, 9/4. Three Chinese astronauts are to go into space and one will make China’s first spacewalk later this year (at the time of the Olympics), but there is annoyingly little information about them or the mission!
TsUP (Moscow Mission Control) has redesigned its website, so it looks a bit better, but the same annoying Javascript menu is required to navigate – if you don’t have Javascript enabled, or are using a text browser, the site is inaccessible.
