Ukrainian Flag to Be Placed on the Moon: Ukroboronprom Joins Mission to Launch Research Lunar Rover

The concern is preparing technical equipment for the lunar rover.

Meridian Joint-Stock Company named after S.P. Korolev, part of the Ukroboronprom industrial concern, has joined the space mission to the Moon being carried out by the British company Spacebit, founded by Ukrainian Pavlo Tanasyuk, in partnership with enterprises from various countries around the world.

The launch is scheduled for spring 2022. This flight will be the first mission to the Earth's satellite with Ukraine's participation.

The symbolic part of the mission will be the delivery of a Ukrainian flag, 3D-printed from Ukrainian titanium. 

During its production, a special 'green', or zero-waste, production technology was used. This was reported by Spacebit founder and CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk.

According to Meridian's business development director Olga Rudenko, the company's testing laboratory will check the equipment that will be used on the Moon for climatic and mechanical stress.

Thanks to a unique 'hot cell' with ionizing radiation sources of up to the 13th power, these devices and equipment will be tested for radiation resistance and radiation aging.

Olga Rudenko
business development director, Meridian Joint-Stock Company

We are also starting to manufacture ultralight and super-strong mechanical structures for the lunar rover equipment, which will begin surveying the surface of the Earth's satellite in a year. We will have the opportunity to touch the future and watch how our company's products help conquer space 

First of all, equipment will be sent to the Moon to study the soil, test sample-collection technology, gather information on thermal properties and the magnetic field, and so on. First, the cargo will land near the large crater Lacus Mortis on the Moon's near side, and then in the dark spot Oceanus Procellarum, which is of interest to scientists, on the surface of the celestial body.

Sensors produced at Ukrainian enterprises will collect information on the radiation background, and a special camera will stream video from the surface. 

All the data obtained will be available to domestic scientists for the development of space programs.

Pavlo Tanasyuk
CEO of Spacebit

It is a great honor for us to be the team thanks to which the flag of Ukraine will for the first time in history be on the lunar surface, and which will carry out the first Ukrainian mission to the Earth's satellite. At the same time, synergy with the state sector is important in this field. We highly value our cooperation with Ukroboronprom, in particular with Meridian Joint-Stock Company, as well as with the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, and we are open to new partnerships to together restore Ukraine's image as a leading power in the global space arena.

The mission is part of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program, a commercial program for delivering cargo to the Moon.