Russia Stages ‘Successful’ Third Launch of New Heavy-Class Angara Rocket

Russia has performed the third launch of its new heavy-class Angara rocket, the primary developed after the autumn of the Soviet Union 30 years in the past this month.

Space company Roscosmos introduced late Monday that the next-generation Angara-A5 rocket had been launched with a mock payload from Plesetsk in northern Russia.

It was the third launch of the brand new rocket after its maiden voyage in 2014.

“Roscosmos congratulates the military-space forces and the entire Russian space industry,” the company mentioned in an announcement, calling the launch “successful”.

Agency head Dmitry Rogozin welcomed the information on Telegram, writing: “Come on, baby!”

The defence ministry added: “All prelaunch operations and the launch of the Angara-A5 rocket took place properly.”

The final launch of the heavy-class Angara rocket came about in December 2020.

Angara rockets — named after a Siberian river flowing out of Lake Baikal — are the primary new household of launchers to be constructed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

They are designed to exchange the Proton rockets that date again to the 1960s and have suffered a collection of failures lately.

President Vladimir Putin hopes the brand new launchers will revive Russia’s house business and scale back reliance on different former Soviet international locations.

Officials say the heavy-class Angara rocket is extra environmentally pleasant than its predecessors as a result of it’s fuelled by oxygen and kerosene somewhat than vastly poisonous heptyl.

The Russian house programme despatched the primary man into house in 1961 and launched the primary satellite tv for pc 4 years earlier.

But for the reason that collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has been suffering from corruption scandals and a collection of different setbacks, dropping costly spacecraft and satellites lately.

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