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Russia test launches first new space rocket since Soviet era Russia test launches first new space rocket since Soviet era
(35 minutes later)
Russia launched its first new design of space rocket since the Soviet era from the northern military space port of Plesetsk on Wednesday, aiming to break its reliance on foreign suppliers as well as the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Russia declared the maiden flight of its new Angara rocket a success on Wednesday after it launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome near Arkhangelsk in the country’s far north.
The Angara rocket's quiet debut was in marked contrast to the live broadcast of an embarrassing aborted first launch attempt, watched by President Vladimir Putin via video link from the Kremlin. The rocket blasted-off at 12 GMT Wednesday on a 21-minute suborbital flight to its target 5,700km away at the Kura test-range in Kamchatka.
"The first test launch of the light-class Angara-1.2PP space rocket was conducted by the Air and Space Defence Forces," Russia's Defence Ministry said in a statement, cited by Russian news agencies. The launch comes a month after a computer glitch forced the Russian Space Agency to abort an earlier maiden flight overseen by Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and due to be broadcast live on national television.
The rocket blasted off at 4pm Moscow time (12pm GMT), on a roughly 20 minute suborbital short flight across Russia's Arctic coast line, the statement said. Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian deputy prime minister in charge of the defence industry, celebrated Wednesday’s successful launch on Twitter, exclaiming: “‘Angara’ is there!” Footage of the launch was later broadcast by the Russian television agency, Zvezda.
More than two decades in the works, the new generation Angara rockets are a key to Putin's effort to reform a once-pioneering space industry hobbled after years of budget cuts and a brain drain in the 1990s. Angara, named after a river in Siberia, is Russia’s first post-Soviet era rocket. The launcher is designed to reduce Russia’s reliance on components and facilities provided by other former Soviet Union countries.
The designer of the first stage RD-191 engine, Energomash, blamed the failure on its first trial launch on a drop in the pressure of the liquid oxygen tank. The Angara rocket is built on a modular design that can be configured to suit its payload. For example, additional thrusters can be strapped on to the rocket to launch heavy payloads of around 7.5 tonnes into orbit.
The rocket is the first to have been entirely designed and built within post-Soviet Russia's borders - ordered by then President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s to break dependence on other ex-Soviet republics and a launch pad Russia leases from Kazakhstan. The rockets are based around a “universal rocket module” powered by a single engine that burns kerosene and liquid oxygen.
A potential commercial rival to Arianespace of France and Californian-based SpaceX, a heavier version of the modular launcher is designed to replace Russia's workhorse Proton rocket which has suffered an embarrassing litany of failures. Wednesday’s flight involved a custom version of the rocket, the 40metre-long, 180-tonne Angara 1.2pp light, which paves the way for the first orbital test flights of the rocket.
But industry experts estimate its development has cost billions of dollars and the Angara rockets will only become commercially viable in another decade if launched from a new cosmodrome Russia is building in the far east. The simplest configuration can deliver a four-tonne payload into orbit.
Russia hopes the Angara rocket family will work well enough to replace many of the other rockets in the national fleet. Russia’s workhorse rockets are the Soyuz, which services the International Space Station, and the Proton, the largest and most powerful rocket the nation operates.
They have several others, including the Rokot for placing lightweight military satellites in orbit, and the Dnepr and Strela rockets for small commercial launches.
Russia intends to launch Angara rockets from Plesetsk and the Vostochny cosmodrome, which is still being built in the Russian far east.