Angara is moving ahead

The Angara family of modular-design launch vehicles has graced the MAKS space section several times before. Unfortunately, the financial crisis that began in 2008 delayed the beginning of its flight tests by two years. The first launch of the light-class Angara-1.2 is now set for the second quarter of 2013, with the first flight of the heavier Angara-5 to follow in the fourth quarter of that year.

The program is progressing despite the hold-ups. Qualification tests on the fuel tanks are virtually completed, as is the testing of the dry bays, lower-stage engines, control systems, and telemetry. Test firings of the URM-1 lower-stage and URM-2 upper-stage Universal Rocket Modules reportedly went off successfully.

In late May 2011, official ground trials were successfully completed on the RD-191 first-stage engine, which had accumulated over 24,000 seconds of running time in a series of bench tests. The RD-0124A upper-stage engine is performing similarly satisfactorily in comprehensive tests, having clocked in excess of 17,000 seconds of bench time. The middle of May this year saw the completion of official tests on the prototype engine, the RD-0124, which is mounted on the third stage of the new Soyuz-2.1B launch vehicle.