The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has appointed Deputy Head of State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) Volodymyr Mikheev acting head of the agency. He replaced First Deputy Head of the SSAU Mykhailo Lev in this position.
The corresponding orders were adopted by the government on February 22 and made public on Tuesday.
As reported, Lev temporarily headed the SSAU since the middle of November, when Volodymyr Usov, who had headed the agency since January 24, 2020, was fired.
Former head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) Yuriy Alekseyev (2005-2014) has concerns about the current national policy in the space industry and the absence of the state program to maintain and develop the sector. “On the eve of Cosmonautics Day, I learned that the Ukrainian space agency has neither the concept of the industry nor the action plan for the near future, which is a very bad trend. It means that we do not need anyone as the industry and we are not interesting for the government in solving national tasks and problems. Despite the fact that many words and good intentions about the revival of the former glory and power of the Ukrainian space were mentioned during the appointment of the new head of the SSAU,” the former SSAU head said in an article posted on the website of the nongovernmental organization Space Initiatives Center (SIC).
“Forty years of work in the aerospace industry of the Soviet Union and the state of Ukraine allow me to think so and speak. From the very first days of Ukraine’s independence, the then leaders of the state thought and cared about people and enterprises that had never been controlled by Kyiv. L.Kravchuk, V.Masol, L.Kuchma, V.Pustovoitenko, O.Kuzmuk, P.Hermanchuk and many others understood that this is the intellect of science, both among scientists and engineers, and among the working class. We got an opportunity to work actively and contact with the leading aerospace enterprises and agencies around the world,” he said.
Alekseyev said that the history of the formation of the space industry of independent Ukraine was not easy, and included both successes and losses. Among them is the disruption of plans for cooperation with the United States on the launch of low-Earth orbiting satellites with the help of the Zenit-2 launch vehicle (LV) designed and produced in Ukraine under the Irridium program and the successful implementation of a large-scale international project on the commercial launches of satellites from the Sea Launch pad using the same Zenit LV.
“We made more than 30 successful launches, but at the same time there were failures and partially fulfilled tasks. Ukraine earned about $1 billion through Pivdenmash and Pivdenne [Design Bureau] thanks to the Sea Launch company,” he said.
According to Alekseyev, the work done by the industry enterprises in the field of satellite systems creation contributes to the successes of Ukraine. This is the creation of the Earth remote sensing satellite for Egypt following the international tender that was launched in 2007 by the EgyptSat spacecraft and the creation and launch of its own Sich-2 satellite with a target resolution of 2.5 meters in 2011. These works on EgyptSat and Sich-2 showed the world that Ukraine is able to design, manufacture, prepare for launch and operate spacecraft. The volume of its own work in the creation of these devices and ground infrastructure reached 75-80%,” the ex-head of the SSAU said.
“But this is all in the past. The last years of leapfrog and the replacement of the agency’s directors [SSAU], four in three years, have led to the fact that the industry stands on the verge of collapse,” Alekseyev said.
Thus, the ex-head of the SSAU criticized “the loud statements of some heads of space enterprises and agencies at briefings and press conferences in Canada and Japan on the construction of launching sites in Canada, then in Scotland, then in Australia,” which, he said, do not do honor to the State Space Agency of Ukraine and the leadership of the country.
At the same time, Alekseyev connects his hopes for positive changes in the space industry with 2019.
“I hope that the year 2019, the year of the 75th anniversary of Pivdenmash, will be the year of the revival of Sea Launch’s launches, the year of completion of the work on the creation of a Ukrainian war missile,” he said.
