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South Korea’s first astronaut returned to Earth on Saturday, touching down with two International Space Station crew members in a cramped Russian landing pod, space officials said.
The Soyuz craft landed slightly off its target in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, but Korean scientist Yi So-Yeon and her two colleagues emerged unscathed, the officials said in a televised briefing.
“The landing was within the normal limits… all of the cosmonauts are well,” said Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos.
The three crew members said they felt “wonderful,” another official said.
Yi, whose mission was hailed as a landmark for the Korean space programme, was joined on the descent by Russian flight engineer Yury Malenchenko and US astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has now spent more time in space than any other American.
The three were plucked by Russian helicopters from the barren steppe of Kazakhstan, the centre of the Russian space programme since the Soviet era, Roskosmos head Perminov said.
They landed off target because they changed their landing plan at the last minute without telling mission control, delaying the rescue mission, he said.
Yi, a biosystems engineer, carried out a series of experiments during her nine-day mission on the space station, which has been hailed as a landmark for South Korea’s space programme.
President Lee Myung-Bak described it as the start of a “march towards space” for South Korea.
After paying some 20 million US dollars (12.8 million euros) for Yi’s mission, Seoul is due to launch a satellite from its own space base later this year.
Yi also brought an Asian flavour to the ISS, taking a kimono on board and bringing South Korea’s beloved pickle dish kimchi into space.
While Yi only spent nine days on board, Whitson and Malenchenko were in orbit for 191 days. The trip pushed Whitson’s career total to 377 days in space, more than any other American, US space agency NASA said.
She was replaced as commander by Russian Sergei Volkov, who at 35 is the youngest person ever to run the ISS, which has accommodated 156 astronauts from 15 countries, as well as five “space tourists.”
Volkov is the son of former Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, who launched from the Soviet Union and returned only after the Soviet collapse of December 1991, the two forming the first father-and-son space dynasty.
Back at mission control in Moscow, Malenchenko’s wife Yekaterina said she was not upset that the crew had changed their landing plan at the last minute. “It’s the second time that has happened,” she said.
“My first word to him will be ‘hi’ — it’s been so long since I’ve seen him,” she said.
Malenchenko, who was making his third long-term flight in space, married Yekaterina via a video link up from the space station in 2003.
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