MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/: Two launches of Russia’s latest Angara carrier rocket are planned for 2021, Chief of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin announced on Monday.
"Two launches next year," the Roscosmos chief wrote on Twitter, without specifying the rocket’s modifications.
The Roscosmos head told TASS in August that the 2021 plan envisaged the launch of heavy Angara-A5 rocket No. 3 with a new Persei booster and a light Angara-1.2 launch vehicle. He also said that a fourth Angara heavy carrier rocket would be ready in 2021.
An Angara-A5 heavy carrier rocket blasted off at 08:50 a.m. Moscow time on December 14 from site No. 35 of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Plesetsk state testing spaceport in the northern Arkhangelsk Region. This was the second test-launch of the new Angara rocket. Twelve minutes after the blast-off, the rocket’s space head comprising a booster and an integral payload mockup separated from the third stage in the normal mode.
As Russia’s Defense Ministry specified, all the pre-launch operations and the rocket’s launch proceeded normally. The launch was carried out by a combat team of Russia’s Aerospace Force.
The 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 tonnes. The new family of rockets uses environmentally-friendly propellant components.
Until now, Russia carried out two Angara launches, both of them from the Plesetsk spaceport: a light Angara-1.2PP blasted off in July 2014 and its heavy version lifted off on December 23, 2014, orbiting a payload mock-up of 2 tonnes.
