An American-Ukrainian Antares rocket successfully launched a spacecraft with cargo for the International Space Station (ISS) into orbit on Wednesday.
This is the second successful launch of an Antares rocket this year, the CFTS portal reports, citing the Interfax Ukraine news agency. The first launch took place in February.
According to the Ministry of Strategic Industry, the first stage of the rocket was manufactured in Ukraine to order from the Northrop Grumman Corporation, the main developer of the launch vehicle.
The main design of the first stage of the rocket was developed by the Pivdennyi design bureau and manufactured by Pivdenmash jointly with the Ukrainian enterprises Hartron-ARKOS (Kharkiv), Kyivprylad, Hartron-UCOM (Zaporizhia), the Chernihiv radio equipment plant, and RAPID (Chernihiv).
According to the ministry, the Antares launch vehicle launched a Cygnus cargo spacecraft with 3,724 kilograms of NASA payload for the ISS onboard into orbit.
Deputy Prime Minister for Strategic Industries Oleh Uruskyi noted that the Antares launch vehicle has already performed 15 launches since 2013, 14 of which were successful.
"The Antares project is one of the striking examples of successful cooperation between Ukrainian and American engineers, who managed to quickly create a reliable launch vehicle for delivering payloads to the ISS," he said.
