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BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — As a Russian Soyuz spacecraft rose into the sky Tuesday, South Koreans celebrated their first astronaut, and the astronaut’s mother fainted.
The spacecraft lifted off within seconds of its scheduled departure and delivered its crew into orbit about 10 minutes later. Mission commander Sergei Volkov, 35, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, 43, and Yi So-Yeon, a 29-year-old South Korean bioengineer, are to arrive at the international space station Thursday.
At liftoff, Yi’s mother screamed and collapsed. Her daughter is the first Korean and the youngest woman ever to fly into space. The Associated Press
