During its meeting the Scientific and Technical Council of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) adopted a strategy on developing space industry, which provided for carrying out launching operations on putting into orbit at least 6 satellites by 2022.
Oleg Urusky, the Head of SSAU, said that the strategy, signed on May 21, pointed to the problematic issues and ways of their solution. It provides for launching communications satellites like Lybid and Lybid-2, spacecrafts like Sich-2-1, Sich-2M, Sich-3, designed for sounding the Earth, as well as the space system like Ionosat, which will monitor the dynamic processes in the ionosphere. The agency also plans to launch students’ satellites.
We shall recall that the launch of the communications and broadcasting spacecraft Lybid has a long and sad story. In April of the past year it became known, that due to the recent annexation of the Crimean peninsula the launch of Ukrainian communications satellite, scheduled for April 27 2014, was postponed supposedly to the summer of the same year. At the same time, the Ukrainian digital satellite TV operator Lybid TV announced its closedown.
Soon after that the launch was rescheduled for the autumn 2014, and later on for the end of the year. In early August of the past year it became known that the Ukrainian communications satellite was accepted for custody by JSC ISS n.a. Academician M.F. Reshetnev. In late September, during the meeting of the National TV and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine and the state-owned companies like Ukrkosmos and SSAU, the launch date of Lybid was shifted to the beginning of 2015.
