In Ukraine, work is underway to launch the country's cosmonaut into orbit. This was announced on October 8 by Vladimir Taftai, head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine.
"We are now actively working on this. I don't want to name any deadlines, but I emphasize that work is underway on this," Taftai said in an interview with the RBC-Ukraine website.
Taftai noted that now the department is also engaged in the creation of high-tech elements for the lunar settlement.
"For example, Yuzhnoye Design Bureau (Dnipro) has a very interesting development on hydrolysis and electrolysis of water on the Moon and on energy accumulators. There are many developments that can be in demand when creating such large projects as the lunar settlement," Taftai added.
The only Ukrainian cosmonaut Leonid Kadenyuk was launched into orbit in 1997. He went into space on the USS Columbia and performed experiments at the Institute for Human Systems Research.
Earlier, on October 5, the sOyuz-2.1a carrier rocket was launched with the sOyuz MS-19 spacecraft with actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko.
In orbit, the film crew will shoot a feature film in space. The picture, called "The Challenge", will be a joint project of ROSCOSMOS, Channel One and the studio Yellow, Black and White. The actress and director will return to earth on October 17 together with cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky on the sOyuz MS-18 spacecraft.
