The launch of the Antares carrier rocket, created by the American Orbital ATK Corporation with the participation of Ukrainian enterprises, has been carried out from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in the United States, Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly has said. The Antares rocket is a successful example of interaction between the Ukrainian and U.S. space companies in the field of peaceful space exploration, the ambassador said on his Facebook page.
“Thus, the main construction of the first degree rocket was developed by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and manufactured at the Makarov Southern Machine-Building Plant in cooperation with the Ukrainian enterprises Khartron-Arkos, Khartron-UKOM, Rapid, etc. Ukrainian specialists took an active part in the tests of Antares, which were conducted in the United States,” Chaly said.
“It is this rocket that should deliver the Cygnus automated cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station,” he added.
The ambassador recalled that in June 2018, the American company Orbital ATK, Ukraine’s partner in this project, became a division of one of the most powerful defensive corporations in the United States — Northrop Grumman Inc.
