Russia launches first Angara-A5 from Vostochny base

April 11 () –

Russia successfully launched a heavy-lift rocket on April 11 Angara-A5 with an Orion booster for the first time since Vostochny spaceportin the Far East, on his third attempt.

In approximately 12 minutesthe Orion booster with the test payload separated from the Angara upper stage and continued delivering it to the target orbit as part of the rocket's flight development tests, TASS reported.

This first test launch of the Angara-A5 since was initially scheduled for the afternoon of April 9, but the takeoff was canceled due to the activation of an automatic safety system two minutes before launch. due to a failure in the oxidant tank pressurization system.

The second launch attempt was made at 12:00 Moscow time (09:00 UTC) on April 10, but an order was issued to cancel the launch and prepare the rocket for a 24-hour shutdown. As the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, explained, a new technical failure related to a failure in the engine start control systemas shown by the results of the preliminary analysis of telemetric data.

The head of Roscosmos assured that no irreversible processes requiring the dismantling of the rocket had occurred and that technical delays were not unusual while the current test stage was aimed at identifying and eliminating such problems.

This is the first test flight of the Angara rocket from the Vostochny spaceport in eastern Russia. Previously, these launch vehicles took off only from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwestern Russia.

The first three launches of heavy Angara rockets from the Plesetsk spaceport took place on December 23, 2014, December 14, 2020 and December 27, 2021. The launch of the light Angara rocket took place on July 9, 2014 (suborbital test flight), April 29, 2022 (the orbital flight) and October 15, 2022 (the orbital flight).

The Angara test launch from the Vostochny spaceport has begun flight development testing of the Amur rocket system including the Angara carrier rocket and spaceport infrastructure. The construction of the infrastructure for the Angara rocket at the Vostochny cosmodrome began in 2019 and at the end of last year The operational capacity of the technical complex and the launch platform was confirmed.

Angara is a family of next-generation Russian space rockets. It consists of light, medium and heavy carrier rockets with a lifting capacity of up to 37.5 tons. The new family of rockets uses kerosene and liquid oxygen as 'clean' propellant components compared to the Proton-M rocket fuel, which Angara will replace in the future.

In addition to the basic Angara-A5 rocket (with a takeoff mass of about 773 tons and a payload capacity of up to 24.5 tons in low near-Earth orbit), Russia will produce the Angara-A5M modification with higher lifting capacity and the Angara-A5V launch vehicle with the first and second stages reusable and the third stage powered by hydrogen.

Russia intends to use the Angara family of carrier rockets to put automated probes (for example, the Spektr-UF orbital observatory) into near-Earth orbit, deliver some modules of the future Russian Orbital Station and crews to the orbital outpost aboard the future next generation spacecraft.