Russia to Test Angara 5 on Dec. 23
First Angara A5 launch vehicle rolled out to the pad. (Credit: Khrunichev)
Russia hopes to cap off nearly 20 years of development work with a successful launch of its new Angara A5 rocket on Dec 23.
If all goes well, the new booster will place a dummy payload into orbit. It will be the first orbital launch for the Angara rocket, which was approved in 1995. A smaller version of the rocket, the Angara A1.2, conducted a suborbital flight test in July.
Angara, which is produced by Khrunichev, is designed to replace a number of Soviet-era launch vehicles, including the Proton and Zenit systems. It will initially launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, with eventual plans to operate from the new Vostochny facility under construction in the Russian Far East.
The Angara rocket family. (Credit: Allocer)
Angara is a modular family of launch vehicles capable of lifting from 3.8 to 35 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO). The vehicle uses a common core booster (CCB) that can be clustered together for different variants. One CCB is used for the Angara-A1.2 with seven used for the heavy-lift Angara-A7.
| ANGARA A1.2 | ANGARA A3 |
ANGARA A5 |
ANGARA A7 |
|
| Liftoff Mass (Tons) | 171 | 481 | 773 | 1,133 |
| Payload to LEO (Tons) |
3.8 | 14.6 | 24.5 | 35 |
| Payload to GTO (Tons) |
— | 3.6 (KVTK), 2.4 (Breeze-M) | 7.5 (KVTK), 5.4 (Breeze-M) | 12.5 (KVTK-A7) |
| Payload to GSO (Tons) | — | 2.0 (KVTK), 1.0 (Breeze-M) | 4.6 (KVTK), 3.0 (Breeze-M) | 7.6 (KVTK-A7) |
| Launch Site | Plesetsk | Plesetsk | Plesetsk | Plesetsk |
Each CCB is powered by a single RD-191 liquid engine. The RD-191 was developed based on RD-170/171 engine that is used in the Zenit launch vehicle and and an engine from the retired Energia rocket.
The Angara A1.2 uses the Breeze-KM as its upper stage. Payload capability for the Angara A3 and Angara A5 rockets depend upon whether the Breeze-M or KVTK upper stage is used.
Khrunichev tested Angara’s first stage three times as part of the KSLV-1 launch vehicle it developed for South Korea. Those flights occurred in 2009, 2010 and 2013.
Editor’s Note: The Russians moved the launch date up from Dec. 25 to Dec. 23.
20 responses to “Russia to Test Angara 5 on Dec. 23”
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Good luck with that .. they have had a bad string lately .. hope they pull this one off.
I like their Baikal concept to reuse the boosters, landing them like jet airplanes. But it seems to remain an idea only without real ongoing development today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
While I like seeing reuse ( only way to compete with s pacex), that approach will never fly. Too expensive and too much weight.
Not too expensive. Drone, lift and heat tech is advanced and ‘low’ cost, after all it would be for reuse. Definitely too much weight in avionics and fuel.
The problem is those wings are massive weight that restricts their lift capacity.
The jet is 1 tonne. Add in wheels, wing, stabilizers, well, I could see it adding several tonnes to each core.
Yeah, putting jet engines on a rocket can’t be optimal. It is a rocket damn it, it can already fly!
Good luck to Russia. Hopefully this current political situation ends soon and we can see expanded work together.
But with that said, I seriously doubt that it is a dummy sat.
This launch has been put forward to the 23rd.
Hm, is this a first in rocket launches? A launch date earlier than previously planned? 😉
as I said earlier, I am pretty sure that the ‘dummy’ sat is anything BUT.
I also suspect that the payload just got re-targeted.
Maybe it helps, as SpaceX does, to use many engines per first stage, like nine of them! One could use one or two or three of them to give the landing cushion needed. Angara just has one engine per booster, if I can rely on what I easily find online.
It’s worth noting that, AFAIK, Angara 7 would require a new launch pad. 1-5 use the same launch table with 5 perpendicular ‘holes’ in it, so that it is easily reconfigured for varying number of CCB’s. Adding two more CCB’s would require modifications to the launch table.
Yes, A7 seems to be far out in their program. Better informed bloggers and posters know about this.
Don’t be snotty
“Snotty”? Why run a blog on rocket launches without googling wikipedia on the subject one is writing about? Mistakes happen, especially about foreign (non-US) space programs since there’s less information around about them. But it is not “snotty” to point that out. If it is perceived to be “snotty”, then there’s much the more reason to do something about it. The failure won’t be diminished by calling any fact on the issue “snotty”.
Yep. Snotty. It’s a forum open to lots of people with varying degrees of knowledge. Your inability to make your point without putting the guy down is snotty. And I’m being nice when I say that.
The Russian stages are usually somewhat heavier (and I assume more robust) as that of SpaceX for example and might be landed by help of parachutes and airbags. As proposed for Kilster and also for Energia. However, that is not easy in Russia (with large forrest regions).
O.K., 6% is good, equals Saturn-V’s first stage (S-IC) and nears Falcon 9’s first stage (I heard from a value of about 5%).
However, please check for example Zenit stages, which is heavier as 6% inert mass fraction.
Here is the Energia block A flight scheme and trajectory.