MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Russia’s Angara-A5 heavy-lift rocket has fulfilled all assigned tasks set for its test launch, Roscosmos CEO Yury Borisov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"As you know, twice, on April 9 and 10, the liftoff was automatically cancelled and the combat crew, together with engineers and designers, had to find the fault. The combat crew worked well, competently, cold-bloodedly and deserves special praise. On April 11 at 12:00 a.m. Moscow time (9:00 a.m. GMT), the rocket blasted off and performed all its tasks," he said at a meeting of the president with the government, adding that the Orion booster, launched by the Angara-A5 carrier rocket, has also fulfilled all its tasks by delivering a Gagarinets small satellite into low-Earth orbit.
The Angara-A5 heavy-lift rocket blasted off from the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East at 12:00 p.m. Moscow time (9:00 a.m. GMT) on April 11 after two failed attempts in the previous two days.
This was the first test-flight of the Angara rocket from the Vostochny spaceport in eastern Russia. Previously, these launch vehicles blasted off only from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia.
The Angara test-launch from the Vostochny spaceport has commenced flight development tests of the Amur rocket system that comprises the Angara carrier rocket and the spaceport’s infrastructure.