Roscosmos
Depending on how you look at it, Russia’s next-generation flagship rocket program, the Angara program, is already 30 years old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of a long economic recession.
Almost 10 years have passed since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. Angara A5, the heaviest version of the Angara rocket family, is about to make its fourth flight, and like his previous three launches, this mission will not carry a real satellite.
This upcoming launch will be a milestone for the beleaguered Angara rocket program, as it will be the first Angara flight from Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest launch site in the Far East. Previous Angara launches were based at the military-run Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
Everyone’s all dressed up and there’s nowhere to go.
On Wednesday, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos announced that Vostochny engineers are fueling the Orion upper stage of the Angara A5 and will soon install fuel on the rest of the rocket. The Angara A5 is currently scheduled to arrive at the launch pad a few days before launch, scheduled for next month.
The Angara A5 rocket is meant to replace Russia’s Proton rocket, which uses toxic propellant and can only be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Angara’s launch pad is located on Russian territory. Until a few years ago, Proton was a contender in the global commercial launch market, but the rocket lost ground due to reliability issues, competitive pressure from SpaceX and the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian officials have previously touted Angara as a successor to Proton in the commercial market. Currently, Angara will only serve the Russian government, but it is doubtful that the Russian government will have enough demand to regularly fill the heavy latch capacity of the Angara A5. According to RussianSpaceWeb.comAccording to a website run by veteran Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak, the Russian government did not have a functional satellite available for flight with the upcoming Angara A5 launch from Vostochny.
Eventually, the Angara A5 could take over responsibility for launching a small number of large satellites that require the capabilities of the Proton rocket. However, this is a small number of flights. Proton has been launched three times in the past two years, and about a dozen Proton rockets remain in Russia’s inventory.
Russia is planning its next-generation manned spacecraft, Orel, and officials claim it will begin launching on Angara A5 rockets in 2028. There is no evidence that Aurel will be ready for test flights within four years. So although the Angara rocket is finally flying, albeit anemic, Russia can only carry so much payload.
While Russia’s economic woes may explain some of the delays that have befallen the Angara program since 1992, Russia’s space program has long been plagued by chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and corruption. Ta. Angara is the only rocket Russia has developed from scratch since the 1980s, and the Russian government chose Khrunichev, one of the country’s oldest space companies, to oversee the Angara program.
Finally, in 2014, Russia launched the first two Angara test flights. One used a single-booster lightweight version of the rocket called Angara 1.2, and the other used the heavy-lift Angara A5, which combines five Angara rocket cores into one. rocket.
Khrunichev said the Angara A5 can put up to 24.5 tons (about 54,000 pounds) into low Earth orbit. The single-use rocket has enough power to launch space station modules and deploy the Russian military’s largest reconnaissance satellites, but as of 2020, the Angara A5 costs $100 million each. It is reported that this significantly exceeds Proton.
The smaller Angara 1.2 has flown twice since 2014, and both missions delivered functional satellites into Russian military orbit. The much larger Angara A5 was launched on his three occasions, all carrying dummy payloads. The most recent Angara A5 launch in 2021 failed due to problems with the rocket’s Persei upper stage. The Orion upper stage scheduled to fly on the next Angara A5 mission is an improved version of the Persei, itself modeled on the Block DM upper stage, a design with roots in his 1960s.
Essentially, the Angara A5 flight will allow engineers to test changes to the upper stage and allow Russia to commission a second launch pad in Vostochny, which has been mired in corruption and delays. Medium-lift Soyuz rockets have been flying from Vostochny since 2016.
