This story was updated at 1:33 p.m. EST.
WASHINGTON - Two Russian cosmonauts and South Korea's first astronaut are
gearing up for a planned April launch to the International Space Station (ISS).
Cosmonaut
commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko will serve as the core
of the space station's Expedition 17 crew when they arrive at the orbital lab
this spring. South
Korea's Ko San, an artificial intelligence expert, will accompany them to
usher his country into the realm of human spaceflight.
"We are
bringing a lot of experiments," Ko told reporters in a Tuesday briefing, adding
that it was an honor to serve as his nation's first spaceflyer. "I hope that it
will be successful so that we can continue the program into the future."
Ko and the
Expedition 17 crew are slated to launch toward the ISS on April 8 from the Kazakhstan's Baikonur
Cosmodrome aboard a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft. The launch will kick off a
planned six-month mission for Volkov and Kononenko, who represent Russia's Federal Space Agency and will make their first
career spaceflights during Expedition 17. A series of NASA astronauts will
rotate out as Expedition 17 crewmembers during the spaceflight.
"We have
all trained together for a really long time," said Volkov, who is a
second-generation cosmonaut as the son of veteran spaceflyer Alexander Volkov.
"We are, all of us, well-motivated [people] and we want to perform our flight
as successful as it is possible to do."
The
Expedition 17 cosmonauts will relieve the station's current caretakers - Expedition
16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko - who are
in the midst of their own six-month mission to the ISS. The third member of
their crew, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, is expected to launch to the
station before Volkov and Kononenko as part of the agency's STS-123 flight to deliver a robotic arm addition and the first segment of Japan's
three-part
Kibo laboratory to the ISS.
Ko will
spend about nine days aboard the ISS before returning to Earth with the
Expedition 16 crew. He was chosen from a field of some 36,000 applicants to
serve as South Korea's first astronaut and perform 18 experiments aboard the space station, Ko said. Yi Soo-yeon, a female mechanical engineer, will serve as Ko's backup for the
spaceflight.
Volkov and
Kononenko hope to preside over the April arrival of another robotic arm
and a large pressurized module for the Kibo lab, and look forward to the
planned September delivery of new equipment that will allow the station to
support larger, six-person crews. Two planned shuttle flights, aimed at
launching on April 24 and Sept. 18, respectively, will each ferry a new U.S. crewmate
to the ISS.
Reisman
will replace European astronaut Leopold Eyharts when his shuttle flight launches in
mid-March.
NASA's
repeated delays to its upcoming
STS-122 mission - to launch no earlier than Feb. 7 after fuel sensor
glitches thwarted a December liftoff - have cut Reisman's mission about a month
short. He initially hoped to launch to the station on Feb. 14 before NASA
rescheduled the space shot to March, but dealing with unexpected changes is part
of the job, he said.
Fellow U.S. spaceflyer
Gregory Chamitoff, meanwhile, will relieve Reisman during the April shuttle
mission while crewmate Sandra Magnus - the only veteran spaceflyer of the
entire Expedition 17 crew – plans to join the spaceflight in September and stay
on for part of the next ISS mission.
"They're
all rookies and they have not flown in space yet," said Magnus, who helped
deliver part of the station's backbone-like main truss during NASA's STS-112
shuttle flight in 2002. "But by the time I arrive, they'll all have more time in
space than I do."
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