The satellite will be delivered to the United States for launch from the SpaceX site
KIEV, December 8. /tass/. The plane with the Ukrainian satellite of remote sensing of the earth "Sich-2-30" on Wednesday took off from the Ukrainian international airport Borispol. The satellite will be delivered to the United States for launch from the SpaceX site, the airport's press service said.
"Today at 11:27 (12:27 Moscow time), a Turkish Airlines cargo plane with a Ukrainian Sich-2-30 spacecraft on board took off from Boryspil International Airport," the report says.
The plane will arrive at Miami Airport on December 12. "After customs clearance is completed, [the satellite] will be delivered to the Kennedy Space Center to undergo preparations for launch and its docking with SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle," the airport added and recalled that the satellite launch is scheduled for January 10, 2022.
Kiev chose the American company SpaceX to launch the Sich-2-30 satellite, manufactured at the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in the city of Dnipro (formerly Dnepropetrovsk). The satellite has successfully passed all tests. The amount of the launch contract is $1.99 million. The service life of Sich is three years. On May 31, it became known that Yuzhnoye Design Bureau signed a contract with ISILAUNCH to launch a satellite into orbit from the SpaceX launch pad using a Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
According to the Ukrainian side, the launch of this satellite will allow solving many urgent tasks of socio-economic, environmental, informational, scientific and educational nature, as well as ensure the realization of the interests of the state in the field of national security and defense. The withdrawal of Sich is the first step towards the implementation of the National Targeted Scientific and Technical Space Program of the country for 2021-2025, which provides for the creation of a Ukrainian space group of at least seven satellites. In October, the head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Vladimir Taftai, said that Sich-2-30 would allow monitoring the situation in Donbass.