Russia and Ukraine plan to launch a new earth observation satellite later this year, Interfax news agency said Tuesday.
Ukraine and Russia are planning to launch the Sich-1m satellite, designed to study Earth, in December 2004, a source in the Ukrainian National space agency told Interfax.
The project of joint development and usage of the Sich-1m satellite enjoys a high priority in the Russian-Ukrainian space exploration program, the news agency said. Sich-1m is a modification and an upgrade of another Sich-1m satellite that was successfully launched in 1995, it said.
The two former Soviet republics continue to closely integrate their respective space programs. The largely Ukrainian-built Dnepr booster rocket, an adaptation of the military RS-20, known by NATO as the SS-18 Satan regularly launches Western communications satellites from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
