It was launched with the help of an American rocket
KIEV, January 13. /tass/. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that a connection has been established with a Ukrainian satellite launched on Thursday with the help of an American launch vehicle.
"I am pleased to inform you that the National Center for Control and Testing of Space Assets near the town of Dunaevtsy in the Khmelnitsky region successfully conducted the first communication session with our satellite Sich-2-30, which was launched into space orbit today. Currently, stable communication has been established with the device, all its onboard systems are operating normally," Vladimir Zelensky said in his official Telegram channel.
According to the Ukrainian president, the data obtained thanks to the Sich-2-30 satellite will help Ukrainian farmers, cartographers, workers in the fields of forestry and water management, security and defense, monitoring of emergencies and natural disasters. The Ukrainian satellite will be integrated into the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation program, Zelensky added. He expressed confidence that the project "will provide Ukraine with a worthy place among the leading space states of the world," and the Ukrainian aerospace industry "will be the visiting card" of the country.
The Falcon 9 launch vehicle launched from the Cape Canaveral spaceport (Florida) at 10:25 am US East Coast time (18:25 GMT). SpaceX will deliver a total of 105 spacecraft from 20 countries into orbit. Among them is the Ukrainian satellite for remote sensing of the earth "Sich 2-30 (2-1)", whose service life is three years. The main manufacturer of the satellite is Yuzhnoye Design Bureau. As the head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (Goskosmos) Vladimir Taftai pointed out, the contract amount for the launch of Sich 2-30 (2-1) by a SpaceX launch vehicle was $1.99 million. Commenting on the launch, Vladimir Zelensky in his Telegram channel recalled that Ukraine had launched its satellite into space for the first time in the last 10 years.
