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Russia to launch Angara rocket which has been under development for 20 years

Originally, the launch had been planned for June 25 but was postponed for 48 hours

© ITAR-TASS/Alexey Filipov

MOSCOW, June 27. /ITAR-TASS/. The light-class carrier rocket "Angara-1.2PP" is to be launched from Plesetsk spaceport on Friday for the first time. The family of these rockets has been under development since 1994. The cost of the program amounted to over 100 billion roubles.

An official at the Khrunichev Center (the enterprise that developed the Angara) told Itar-Tass, "The launch of the Angara 1.2PP will be effected with a view to putting the second stage of the carrier rocket with a non-detachable payload mockup onto a ballistic flight path with a fall on the Kamchatka Peninsula".

Originally, the launch had been planned for June 25 but, by a decision of the State commission, was postponed for 48 hours.

A space rocket system Angara was flight-tested at Plesetsk earlier. The system consists of the liftoff and engineering components and is designed to deploy satellites, weighing from 2 to 24.5 tonnes, into low, medium, and high circular and elliptical orbits.

Aggressive and toxic heptyl-based rocket fuel will not be used on the rockets of the Angara family. This will enhance the system's environmental safety both in the spaceport area and in places of the fall of separating components of the rocket.

The basic characteristics of the light-class Angara rocket are as follows: liftoff weight 171 tonnes, and payload 3.8 tonnes (when launched to an orbit at an altitude of 200 km).

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