On April 10th, 29-year-old South Korean bio-engineer Yi So-yeon became the country’s first astronaut. On Monday, she became the first South Korean to be scared shitless by a rough return to planet Earth.

“During descent I saw some kind of fire outside as we were going through the atmosphere,” said Yi So-yeon, a 29-year-old bioengineer. “At first I was really scared because it looked really, really hot and I thought we could burn.”

But then she said she noticed it was not even warm inside the Soyuz capsule. “I looked at the others and I pretended to be OK,” Yi said.

As it turned out, Yi had every right to be a little freaked out. She and the capsule’s passengers — American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko — were subjected to gravitational forces 10 times greater than what is experienced on Earth for three and a half hours. A technical glitch caused the craft to take a steeper than usual decline and sent its landing 260 miles off course.

All three members are fine, though were a little shaken up upon emerging from the TMA-11 space craft. Though everyone was okay, this is the third time since 2003 that the Soyuz capsule has had a balky landing. Maybe someone should get that checked.

Space Shuttle Endeavor had a successful launch last night and is currently somewhere between earth and sky on its mission to the International Space Station.

On board is Barbara Morgan, the teacher who was the backup for Christa McAuliffe, who was lost with the rest of the Challenger crew in 1986.

The Endeavor hasn’t flown since before the tragic Columbia disaster in 2003. Their mission is to install a gyroscope on the space station so that it doesn’t have to use fuel to fire rockets to maneuver itself correctly (or something like that). There will be three space walks, the use of a robot arm, and all other sorts of rad things that you used to want to do when you were in 4th grade.

Now all I want to do is sit around and celebrate by watching videos of The Final Countdown over and over. This version in particular: