By Bernama
Moscow : The state committee at the spaceport Baikonur will approve Monday the ISS crew, which the spaceship Soyuz will bring to the ISS on April 8.
“If nothing extraordinary happens Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko and South Korea’s first female astronaut Yi So-yeon will get aboard the Soyuz TMA-12 on Tuesday,” a source in the Federal Space Agency told Itar-Tass on Sunday.
Volkov and Kononenko will work on the orbit for more than half a year, and the South Korean female astronaut will go on a 10-day mission to the ISS.
Yi So-yeon will return to the Earth on April 19 by the spaceship Soyuz TMA-11 with the crew of the 16th main expedition – Yuri Malenchenko and Peggy Whitson, who had been working on the orbit since October 2007.
In late March the interdepartmental committee gave the best marks at the qualification exam for the main crew of the 17th ISS expedition and their backups -Maxim Surayev and Oleg Skripochka.
The South Korean first female astronaut and her backup Ko San also passed the two-day training session at a high level. It was particularly difficult for Yi So-yeon, 29, to pass all exams, as she was included in the main crew a week before the exams.
Her compatriot became a backup after violating the code of cosmonaut. However, the courageous woman put herself together and passed all tests successfully.