Angara commencing flight tests

Russia’s new Angara launch vehicle should begin flight tests this summer, with a delay of nearly one decade. The first launch of the light modification was originally scheduled for June 27. Two days prior to the liftoff, the rocket was rolled out of the processing facility and positioned on its launch pad at Plesetsk Cosmodrome. All operations proceeded nominally on the day of the launch. Then, about 79 seconds prior to ignition, the vehicle’s automated control system aborted the sequence. The launch was first postponed by one hour, then by 24 hours. Further telemetry analysis showed that the malfunction could not be rectified within that timeframe. The rocket was defueled and returned to the processing facility. At print time, a second attempt had been scheduled for July 9.

Launch delays for technical reasons are nothing out of the ordinary. Rockets are high-tech pieces of equipment; they consist of myriads of components. Ensuring their problem-free operation, especially in an all-new product, is never a trivial matter. Nevertheless, let us hope that Angara, Russia’s first entirely indigenous launch vehicle, will blast off in the end.

The Angara program came about shortly after the collapse of the USSR, when it became clear that Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan could not accommodate a range of Russian space payloads, primarily defense missions. Besides, only Baikonur had a launch pad for the heavy Proton vehicle, which is capable of inserting geostationary satellites. In order to ensure Russia’s guaranteed independent access to space, including to geostationary orbits, the Defense Ministry and the national space industry decided to move critical launches to Russian territory, simultaneously designing an alternative to Proton that could carry a wide range of payloads to orbit from the country’s Plesetsk space center in Arkhangelsk Region.