On April 22, 2013, at 00 hours 00 minutes Kiev time, from Wallops Flight Facility located in Atlantic ocean at 240 km from Washington, the first launch of new launch vehicle Antares was successfully made. The prime developer of the launch vehicle is Orbital Sciences Corporation (USA).

The LV is intended, in the first turn, for cargo delivery to the International Space Station and for launching commercial and governmental spacecraft.

The launch vehicle consists of two stages and cargo spaceship Cygnus (third stage).

The Antares LV stage one core structure was developed by Yuzhnoye State Design Office, manufactured by Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant (YMZ) in cooperation with Ukrainian companies: Khartron-ARKOS (Kharkov), Kievpribor (Kiev), Khartron-YUKOM (Zaporozh’e), CHEZARA, RAPID (Chernigov) et al.

The Antares LV pre-launch processing, testing and launch were performed with participation of the specialists from Yuzhnoys SDO, SE PA YMZ, NPO Khartron-ARKOS.

Ten minutes after the launch from the launch base, the Antares rocket successfully injected into target orbit the mass-dimensional dummy of private cargo spaceship Cygnus. Together with the dummy, four satellites of CubeSat standard were put into orbit.

The launch tasks were fully accomplished. The program of cargo delivery to the International Space Station implies launching of ten Antares LV.

Public Relations Center Yuzhnoye SDO