{"id":45389,"date":"2024-03-08T00:07:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T16:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/russias-next-generation-rocket-is-a-decade-old-and-still-flying-dummy-payloads\/"},"modified":"2024-03-08T00:07:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T16:07:27","slug":"russias-next-generation-rocket-is-a-decade-old-and-still-flying-dummy-payloads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/russias-next-generation-rocket-is-a-decade-old-and-still-flying-dummy-payloads\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads"},"content":{"rendered":"

By some measures, Russia\u2019s next-generation flagship rocket program\u2014the Angara\u2014is now three decades old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a prolonged economic recession.<\/p>\n

It has been nearly 10 years since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. The heaviest version of the Angara rocket family\u2014the Angara A5\u2014is about to make its fourth flight, and like the three launches before, this mission won\u2019t carry a real satellite.<\/p>\n

This next launch will be a milestone for the beleaguered Angara rocket program because it will be the first Angara flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia\u2019s newest launch site in the country\u2019s far east. The previous Angara launches were based out of the military-run Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.<\/p>\n

All dressed up and nowhere to go<\/h2>\n

On Wednesday, Russia\u2019s space agency, Roscosmos, said technicians at Vostochny have fueled the Angara A5\u2019s Orion upper stage and will soon install it on the rest of the rocket. The Angara A5 will roll to its launch pad a few days before liftoff, currently scheduled for next month.<\/p>\n

The Angara A5 rocket is supposed to replace Russia\u2019s Proton launch vehicle, which uses toxic propellant and only launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Angara\u2019s launch pads are on Russian territory. Until a few years ago, the Proton was a competitor in the global commercial launch market, but the rocket lost its position due to reliability problems, competitive pressure from SpaceX, and the fallout of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Russian officials once touted Angara as a successor to Proton on the commercial market. Now, Angara will solely serve the Russian government, but it\u2019s doubtful the government has enough demand to fill the Angara A5\u2019s heavy launch capacity on a regular basis. According to RussianSpaceWeb.com, a website run by veteran Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak, the Russian government didn\u2019t have any functional satellites ready to fly on the upcoming Angara A5 launch from Vostochny.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Angara A5 could take over the launch responsibility of the handful of large satellites that require the capacity of the Proton rocket. But this is a small number of flights. The Proton has launched three times in the last two years, and there are roughly a dozen Proton launch vehicles remaining in Russia\u2019s inventory.<\/p>\n

Russia plans a next-generation crew spacecraft, Orel, that officials claim will begin launching on the Angara A5 rocket in 2028. There\u2019s no evidence Orel could be ready for test flights within four years. So, while the Angara rocket is finally flying, albeit at an anemic rate, there aren\u2019t many payloads for Russia to put on it.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Angara rocket\u2019s launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome last year.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Photo by Contributor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Russia\u2019s economic woes might explain some of the delays that have befallen the Angara program since 1992, but Russia\u2019s space program has long suffered from chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and corruption. Angara is the only rocket Russia has developed from scratch since the 1980s, and the Russian government selected Khrunichev, one of the country\u2019s oldest space companies, to oversee the Angara program.<\/p>\n

Finally, in 2014, Russia launched the first two Angara test flights, one with a single-booster lightweight version of the rocket, called the Angara 1.2, and another with the heavy-lift Angara A5, made up of five Angara rocket cores combined into one rocket.<\/p>\n

The Angara A5 can place up to 24.5 metric tons (about 54,000 pounds) into low-Earth orbit, according to Khrunichev. The expendable rocket has enough power to launch modules for a space station or deploy the Russian military\u2019s largest spy satellites, but in 2020, each Angara A5 reportedly cost more than $100 million, significantly more than the Proton.<\/p>\n

The smaller Angara 1.2 has flown twice since 2014, but both missions delivered functional satellites into orbit for the Russian military. The much larger Angara A5 has launched three times, all with dummy payloads. The most recent Angara A5 launch in 2021 failed due to a problem with the rocket\u2019s Persei upper stage. The Orion upper stage set to fly on the next Angara A5 mission is a modified version of the Persei, which is itself modeled on the Block-DM upper stage, a design with its roots in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Essentially, the Angara A5 flight will allow engineers to test out changes to the upper stage and allow Russia to activate a second launch pad at Vostochny, which itself has been mired in corruption and delays. Medium-lift Soyuz rockets have been flying from Vostochny since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By some measures, Russia\u2019s next-generation flagship rocket program\u2014the Angara\u2014is now three decades old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a prolonged economic recession. It has been nearly 10 years since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. The heaviest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1939,1940,25,352,8070],"class_list":["post-45389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-angara","tag-angara-a5","tag-launch","tag-russia","tag-vostochny"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}