Yi So-yeon

Korean spelling
Hangeul	이소연
Hanja	李素姸
Revised ; Romanization	I so-yeon
McCune- ; Reischauer	Yi Soyŏn
	See also : Korean name

Yi So-yeon

Country:	South Korea
Organization:	KARI
selected on	December 25, 2006
Calls:	1 space flight
Begin:	April 8, 2008
Landing:	April 19, 2008
Time in space:	10d 21h 14min
retired on	2014
Space flights
Soyuz TMA-12 / Soyuz TMA-11 (2008)

Yi So-yeon (born June 2, 1978 in Gwangju , South Korea ) is a former South Korean space traveler . The launch of Soyuz TMA-12 was on 8 April 2008, landing on April 19. This makes her the first and so far only South Korean person to be in space.

Scientific training

Yi studied first at Kwangju Science High School, later at KAIST University in Daejeon . Yi received her PhD in biotechnology on February 29, 2008 in absentia.

Astronaut activity

In the spring of 2006 the South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology announced that a South Korean spaceman would take off on a Russian Soyuz spaceship for a short stay on board the International Space Station (ISS). Yi was among over 36,000 applicants who responded to the call. She passed all phases of the selection process and was presented to the public on December 25, 2006 together with Ko San as a South Korean astronaut candidate.

At the beginning of 2007, Yi and Ko went to the Russian Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut training center for a 15-month training course as space flight participants. When it was decided on September 5, 2007 which of the two candidates should fly to the ISS with Soyuz TMA-12 , the choice fell on Ko San, with Yi as a replacement.

On March 10, 2008, however, it was officially announced that Ko had been withdrawn at the urging of the Russian authorities after violating Russian regulations twice. This made Yi, who had completed the same training as Ko, the main crew.

Yi So-yeon together with Peggy Whitson and Juri Malentschenko on the ISS

On April 8, 2008, Yi took off for the ISS on board the Russian Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft . During her eight-day stay on the ISS, she carried out a total of 18 experiments. On April 19, she landed in Kazakhstan on the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft . Irregularities led to a ballistic flight of the Soyuz capsule and a landing over 400 km from the planned landing site.

In 2012, Yi moved to the USA to do an MBA there, and after she got married in 2014, she left the South Korean space program for good at her own request.

Yi is the third Asian in space after Chiaki Mukai from Japan and Anousheh Ansari from Iran / USA . South Korea is the second country after Great Britain whose first space traveler is a woman.