The space vehicle “Lybid”, which is the first Ukrainian telecom satellite, is unlikely to be put into orbit.
According to the Russian “RIA Novosti” edition, “Lybid” was not added to the schedule of launching telecom satellites for 2019 from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
The satellite was supposed to be placed into orbit by means of a Zenit launch vehicle in 2011, but up to date it hasn’t.
This past September, the Chairman of the State Space Agency (SSAU) Pavel Degtyarenko announced a plan of launching the “Lybid” satellite in August 2019. According to him, that was to be pushed up due to resuming cooperation with the Canadian company “MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates” (MDA), which acted as the general contractor for designing the national satellite communications system “Lybid”. In 2017, the Corporation decided to withdraw from the project due to the disappearance of a large sum of money in the Seychelles offshore.
