posted 12-23-2014 01:44 PM               

Successful Launch of a New Heavy-Weight Class Launch Vehicle

On Dec. 23 at 0857 a.m. (12:57 a.m. EST or 0557 GMT) from the Plesetsck Cosmodrome the new type of a heavy-weight-class launch vehicle — Angara — was successfully launched.

"It means, that Russia now has modern and environment friendly launch vehicle of a heavy-weight-class," Oleg Ostapenko, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, said.

The creation of the Angara rocket complex is one of the priority-driven directions of development of the national system of launch vehicles, which is based on Russian inventions. Angara rocket complex consist of light-, middle- and heavy-weight types of LV with the payload from 3.8 to 35 tons. The main design-bureau of a new class of LV is a Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center.

"I'd like to congratulate everyone, who was involved in this project — designers, engineers, workers, military. Thank you for your job," said Oleg Ostapenko earlier this day.

All activities, up to the schedule of building of a ground infrastructure for lift off of Angara, are carrying out in accordance with the Federal Space Program, Strategy of Innovation Development of Russian Federation till 2020 and the basic principles of state policy in the field of the Space exploration till 2030, which was approved by the Russian president on 19 of April 2013.

posted 04-05-2017 11:14 AM               

"We have put it off until 2018," [Andrei Kalinovsky] the Khrunichev Center chief said in an interview, published in Wednesday's edition of Kommersant.

The launch was previously scheduled to take place this year.

"The reason is quite trite: the research and development efforts coincided with the transfer of production to (the Siberian city of) Omsk, and, by mutual consent with the Defense Ministry, we decided to hold additional tests. They are needed to confirm that the Omsk plant is ready from the point of view of production quality, sequence of production operations and qualification of personnel," Kalinovsky was quoted as saying.