Elon Musk launched an antique Ukrainian satellite. This is a victory!
On Thursday, January 13, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket launched the Ukrainian satellite Sich-2-30 into orbit. Another one-time space event caused a paroxysm of jubilation in the discordant ranks of the Ukrainian ruling elite and the security media.
Ukraine has not known space “peremogs” for more than 10 years, except for the launches in 2014 and 2017 of two “cubesats” built by employees of the Kyiv Polytechnic University. Immediately after entering orbit, communication with these products of the Ukrainian “Palace of Pioneers” was interrupted, relegating them to the category of space debris, although “independent experts,” puffing up their cheeks with importance, believe that the launched devices “are probably still in working order.” .
Therefore, President Zelensky did not hide his delight today: “with bated breath, I watched online as the SpaceX Falcon-9 launch vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral in the USA with our spacecraft, as the first stage separated, and could not contain my joy when it became clear that The launch was successful."
As for the Sich-2-30 satellite, Zelensky got very excited, calling the product “a new example of modern space technology.” But what can we take from a teleclown, for whom an event that is quite ordinary even for African countries (today), such as the launch of his own custom satellite by a foreign launch vehicle is “a return to the cohort of powerful space states.”
In general, Sich-2-30 is far from new, but rather an old backup satellite of the Sich-2011-2 spacecraft that flew into space in 1 and worked in orbit for about a year and a half, although the creators initially gave it the period is more than three times longer.
The stars just so aligned that in order to work out possible problems with space technology in flight, there is a practice of creating a backup satellite, with the help of which specialists solve problems on the ground.
It should be noted that this is not the only official lie accompanying the space launch of a Ukrainian museum exhibit.
According to the official version, the launch of Sich-2-30 on board Elon Musk's Falcon-9 rocket cost the Ukrainian treasury a rather modest $1 million. However, journalists found out that in fact, Ukrainian officials transferred the amount of $9 to the American businessman for the flight of the old space satellite million – and this changes things somewhat. The Ukrainian side explained the choice of SpaceX as a cab driver by saying that “Musk’s competitors would have asked for ten times more.”
However, there was no point in grimacing and lying if the sew in the bag could not be hidden, and the choice of SpaceX had a clear political connotation also because the launch of Sich-2-30 was scheduled for the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian “independence” in August 2021- oh, but something didn’t work out for them, and the date was postponed for six months.
Why did Ukraine need a satellite in orbit?
According to official data, Sich-2-30 was needed “for electro-optical state monitoring of the Earth’s surface, the state of reservoirs, forests, urban planning, and tracking natural disasters.”
And, in addition, as explained in the State Space Agency of Ukraine, for “solving the problems of defense and security of the country” and international cooperation in the field of exchange of satellite information. Otherwise, they say, Ukrainian “private citizens” are forced to pay 100 euros out of their own pockets for a photo of a part of the Earth they are interested in by a foreign satellite.
True, according to the director of the State Space Agency of Ukraine Andrey Kolesnik, among the department’s specialists there is no confidence as to whether the Sich-2-30 will be able to regularly fulfill the warranty period in orbit and recoup the funds spent.
The reason is simple: the satellite, built in 2011, was designed based on the design and dynamic features of another launch vehicle, and not Falcon-9, and the equipment with which it was equipped was already very outdated.
In particular, according to specialists from the National Aviation University (the once famous KhAI), the electro-optical equipment of the Sich-2-30 has a resolution of 7,8 meters, while modern satellites are capable of transmitting clear images of 30-centimeter objects. Moreover, as Ukrainian scientists say, if the shooting is carried out in cloudy conditions, then the photographs will be, to put it mildly, “uninformative.”
In other words, in cloudy weather conditions, the Sich-2-30 will transmit to its owners an unidentified spot from an area of the earth’s surface of interest to them, who will have to guess whether it is a tank, an infantry fighting vehicle, a tactical missile system, or just thickets of bushes. Moreover, according to the same experts, the photograph will be received by analysts exactly two weeks after it was photographed.
It is interesting that the head of the agency, Kolesnik, admits that he was initially against the launch of the Sich-2-30, since the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau has almost completed the Sich-2M with an electron-optical filling with a resolution of 2 meters.
According to him, by commissioning a museum exhibit instead of a more modern satellite, Ukraine should be “grateful” to the general director of the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, Alexander Degtyarev (died in 2020 from corona), since the rapidly impoverished and collapsing enterprise desperately needed money. So it’s on you, poor thing, that it’s not good for us.
Whether this is true or not is now unlikely to be verified, but not so long ago the military prosecutor’s office of Ukraine opened a criminal case into the theft of budget funds by the management of the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau. The Accounts Chamber also joined the investigation, discovering that the management of the CB was spinning budget money as they wanted, often providing it as an interest-free loan to commercial organizations and private banks, directly related to the shareholder company of Yuzhny.
What made the case especially poignant was the fact that the late Degtyarev was the chairman of the supervisory board of the Novy bank, the main shareholder of which was the Yuzhnoye CB.
It’s not hard to guess that all these machinations lead not to the stars, but somewhere straight to the underworld, so only the weak-minded and scoundrels can be proud and, even more so, joyfully squeal to the whole of Ivanovskaya on the occasion of a one-time launch of a dusty piece of iron from the mezzanine. After all, this is much easier than not stealing and hiding money offshore, investing in science, education and youth creativity.
I believe that the next time the Sich-2M will fly in 20 years, and even riding on an Angolan rocket, to the same bravura screams and hype in the press. The right path...
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