A senior Ukrainian lawmaker said his country quietly launched two rockets into space some time ago using a flying carrier, touting it as a potential means to one day counter Russia’s hypersonic missiles.
Fedir Venislavskyi, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s subcommittee on state security, defense, and defense innovations, told local media outlet RBC Ukraine that the space launches were conducted while Kyiv was actively fighting Russia’s invasion.
“During the war, Ukraine launched a rocket launcher from a transport aircraft at an altitude of approximately 8,000 meters, which could potentially also be used to launch various types of spacecraft into orbit,” Venislavskyi said in the interview, published Monday.
The lawmaker didn’t say exactly when the launches occurred, but that they were carried out under Kyrylo Budanov when the latter was head of Ukraine’s intelligence services, or GUR. Budanov led GUR until early January, when he was appointed to run Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office.
Air-based space launches aren’t new, but are a largely niche concept. Northrop Grumman, for example, has been developing the Pegasus rocket, which is launched from an aircraft at 39,000 feet.
Between 2017 and 2023, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit also experimented with launching payloads into low-Earth orbit from a Boeing 747, with four successful missions.
Per Venislavskyi, one Ukrainian rocket reached an altitude of about 62 miles, while a second reached 124 miles. The 62-mile mark is generally known as the Kármán line, widely accepted by scientists as the boundary of space.
Launching the rocket from 8,000 meters, or 26,000 feet, allows it to expend less fuel because it would partially avoid denser parts of the atmosphere, Venislavskyi said.
He added that Ukraine aims to soon establish an initial network of about seven to 10 satellites for surveillance and communications.
“We have created an air system that can become an air spaceport in the short term. It can be used for peaceful purposes as well as to counter “Oreshnik.” That is, launch missiles not from the ground, but from the air,” Venislavskyi said.
Oreshnik is an experimental Russian hypersonic ballistic missile that travels in the upper atmosphere, making its trajectory difficult to detect or intercept. It’s also believed to use a Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) payload, meaning it splits into multiple targets for air defense systems upon re-entry into Earth’s lower atmosphere.
Russia has hailed the Oreshnik as “unstoppable,” first using the missile against Ukraine in November 2024, though the attack was reported to have contained dummy explosives.
While widely seen as a move by Russia to flex its tech, the launch has heightened pressure on the West and Ukraine to develop ways to counter such missiles. China is also known to field an arsenal of missiles that use similar or even more advanced hypersonic technology.
If feasible, air-based space launches may be useful for rapid or cheaper launches of air defenses or detection systems. The US has been prototyping space-based interceptors that, in theory, would spot and shoot down hypersonic missiles in the upper atmosphere.
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