Russia Successfully Launch Angara-A5 Booster on Flight Test
PLESETSK COSMODROME, Russia (Roscosmos PR) — The space forces of the Russian Aerospace Forces held on Monday, December 27, 2021, the third test launch of the Angara-A5 heavy carrier rocket with the overall mass model of the payload from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
A few minutes later, the orbital block separated from the third stage. Further insertion of the orbital block into the target geostationary orbit will be carried out using the upper stage according to a typical nine-hour three-pulse scheme with four starts of the main engine of the upper stage.
Roscosmos State Corporation congratulates the Military Space Forces and the entire Russian space industry (the team of the Khrunichev Center, NPO Energomash, NPTs AP, TsENKI) on the successful test launch of the Angara-A5 launch vehicle with a new generation upper stage!
This flight showed that the tests of the Angara rocket are developing exactly according to plan. Next year, it is expected that work on the construction of a launch pad for this type of launch vehicle at the Vostochny cosmodrome will be completed. A year later – its first launch from the new Russian cosmodrome!
7 responses to “Russia Successfully Launch Angara-A5 Booster on Flight Test”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The whole point here is that the Big Kh’s in-house “Briz-M” upper stage is replaced with “Persei” nee “DM-03”, developed in Energiya. That is why they launched a mass simulator.
Yes, interesting news. A reliable upper stage has been lacking for Russian rockets. Both the extant Briz and Fregat stages have had persistent failures.
Fregat is significantly more reliable than this. It bats something like 1 failure in 30, give or take, maybe even better actually: I take this number from Kyle’s library where all faults are counted, including lower stages. But DM is only 2 out of 5 on Proton and 1 in 10 on Zenit. That is not entirely fair because it includes the scandalous mis-fueling incident in the first flight of DM-03, but either way Fregat is way better. It’s just small.
Heck, even Briz is better. The military tried to replace Briz with DM on Angara for a couple of reasons. They get a little payload bump because DM has better t/w. Also, DM offers a more precise orbital insertion (when it works lol).
Well, it seems the announcement of success was premature. The upper stage failed to complete one of its scheduled additional burns and the payload simulator (block of concrete?) will be de-orbiting – perhaps at random – sometime in the next few days.
What can I say about the Russian to English translation? Nailed it (kinda). 🙂
Read today that the upper stage failed to fire on the 2nd time and will de-orbit shortly.
Handsome LV