UKRAINE’S POSTURE IN SPACE: POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEW SPACE-FARING COUNTRY WITH AN OLD SPACE HISTORY

Paper number

IAC-09.E3.P.2

Author

Ms. Olga Stelmakh, V.Koretsky Institute of State and Law, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine

Year

2009

Abstract

The new space-faring country with an old space tradition, Ukraine, might be considered as one of the most controversial internationally acknowledged space stakeholders. After dissolution of USSR, Ukraine inherited one third of the former Soviet space industrial complex. Therewith, a newly independent state assumed a tacit obligation not only to preserve the substantial space potential but further develop it and strengthen. Detached from the holistic integrated complex, in few years independent Ukraine succeed to ensure the provision of a closed cycle of space activities securing itself the leading role on the international space arena.
In the conditions of demilitarisation, reorganisation and commercialisation processes, the appropriate policy building was inevitable. This required the setting of the institutional authority empowered to determine the official state space policy, control and supervise the activities undertaken within the space sector.  These missions due to political will have been committed to the respective authority of executive power, the National Space Agency of Ukraine, established by the presidential decree in 1992. The consolidation under its umbrella of about 30 space related entities, including design offices, enterprises, research institutions etc., completed the institutional formation of the competitive Ukrainian space industry. 
At present, the space activities are regarded as one of the national priority concerns of Ukrainian policy and prerequisites for progressive advance of innovative capacity building and national economic welfare. This instigates to analyse the main rationale for design of the new Ukrainian space governance model, addressing the opportunities and challenges of major crucial national policy trends and to investigate the peculiarities of programmatic approach to strategic planning with a particular emphasise on the effectiveness of such concurrently political and programme mechanism.

Abstract document

IAC-09.E3.P.2.pdf

Manuscript document

(absent)