Elon Musk's Satellite: Director of Byurakan Observatory on Armenian Satellite

On May 25, 2022, at 22:35 Yerevan time, the Transporter-5 spacecraft was launched by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, deploying 59 small satellites into Earth's orbit, including an Armenian satellite for Earth observation.

This news was met with great enthusiasm by the Armenian public, and during a government meeting, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that this marked the beginning of the era of space activity for the Republic of Armenia, writes Armdaily.am.

However, the director of the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Areg Mikaelyan, approaches this issue with caution. "It is very difficult to say that Armenia has its own satellite. It is one of the SpaceX satellites sent by Elon Musk, and it is primarily his. We do not know how much it is considered Armenian now, what agreements they have made. To be Armenian, it needs to be managed from Armenia, and only Armenia should have access to that satellite. If others also have access, that is worse; they could steal our data," Mikaelyan stated in an interview with the news agency.

During the government meeting, Pashinyan stated that by the end of 2023, a satellite management center and receiving station would be established in the Republic of Armenia. Mikaelyan pointed out that when this center is operational, only then could it be presumed that Armenia could hold management, data retrieval, and so on.

"Clarifications need to be made, and we need to understand how much of this is ours. Can we even consider it ours? To become fully ours, the management levers must be in our hands. Right now, it is clear that it is Elon Musk's satellite, but how much we can consider it Armenian is more of an ideological question," he added.

For more details, visit the source website.