PLESETSK, June 27. /ITAR-TASS/. A launch of space rocket Angara has been automatically delayed for a day. “The automatic launch abortion system went off, and the launch was delayed for a day,” a representative of the Aerospace Defense Troops told reporters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour to study the situation related to the automatic launch abortion of space rocket Angara.
After the president was informed about the automatic launch abortion of rocket Angara at a teleconference session from Russian northern spaceport Plesetsk, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu asked the president to give him an hour to study the situation. Putin agreed and ordered to make a report on the issue in an hour.
The Angara-1.2PP light carrier rocket was to lift off from the Plesetsk space launch facility on Friday afternoon without putting any satellites in the near-Earth orbit.
Angara is the first civilian rocket developed by Russia since the death of Soviet space rocket designer Sergei Korolyov in 1966
After the USSR’s disintegration in 1991, Russia felt an urgent need to create a heavy-class carrier rocket. In 1992, three Russian companies, including the Rocket and Space Corporation “Energia”; the Khrunichev Space Center and the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, took part in a tender for designing and creating a heavy space rocket complex.
In 1994, the Khrunichev Space Center won the tender. Besides, the company was appointed the chief designer of the Angara rocket complex. A year later, in 1995, the Russian government passed a resolution setting the deadline for starting the Angara flight tests. The rocket was supposed to be launched from the Plesetsk space launch facility in 2005.
A three-month trial of the Angara carrier rocket was completed in December 2007. The test bed firing of Angara’s Universal Rocket Module-2 (URM-2) took place in 2010.
The prototype of Angara’s first stage (URM-1) was successfully flight tested as part of the first South Korean KSLV-1 carrier rocket in 2009, 2010 and 2013.
More than 100 billion rubles (approx. $2.9 billion) have been invested in the Angara project over the past 20 years.
The first Angara rocket is scheduled to be launched from the Vostochny space launch site which is under construction in Russia’s Amur region in 2015. The first manned launch is to take place at Vostochny onboard the same rocket in 2018.