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Russia’s space chief announces work on RD-191 engine to boost Angara rocket capacity

The RD-191 is a single-chamber engine with a vertically-arranged turbopump unit

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/. Russia’s Energomash Scientific and Production Association will soon begin work with the RD-191 engine to boost the capacity of the Angara-A5M heavy carrier rocket, State Space Corporation Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

"Work will begin soon to boost the RD-191 engine to increase the capacity of the Angara A5M heavy carrier rocket," the Roscosmos chief wrote.

The RD-191 is a single-chamber engine with a vertically-arranged turbopump unit. Its development started in late 1998. This engine with the afterburning of oxidizer-rich gases is designated for the domestic Angara carrier rockets and is based on the design of RD-170/171 engines. The first firing test of the RD-191 engine was held in July 2001.

The Angara is a family of Russian light to heavy carrier rockets that was developed to replace Proton-M and Rokot launchers. As compared to them, the new family of carrier rockets uses environmentally-friendly propellant components. So far, only two launches have been carried out and both of them have been conducted from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia: a light Angara-1.2PP rocket blasted off in July 2014 and a heavy Angara-A5 lifted off in December 2014.

The Vostochny spaceport in the Amur Region in the Russian Far East will become the basic launch site for the Angara family of carrier rockets.