MOSCOW, July 09. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Aerospace Defense Troops have done the first test-launching of a news Russian carrier rocket Angars-1.2PP, a spokesman for the Plesetsk Space Center in northern Russia told ITAR-TASS.

The launch was carried out as scheduled. The preparations and effectuation were supervised by the Commander of Aerospace Troops, Lieutenant-General Alexander Golovko.

Other officials attending the launch were Oleg Ostapenko, the Director of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Igor Komarov, the Director General of the United Space Rocket Corporation.

Strictly in line with the cyclogram (schedule) of the flight, 21 minutes after the launch, the mass-dimensional model of the payload got to the designated spot on Kura testing range in Kamchatka at a distance of 5,700 km.

Angara is the first civilian space-launch vehicle designed in Russia in almost 50 years after the death of the founder of Soviet/Russian cosmonautics, Sergei Korolyov, who died in 1966.

One more family of rockets, the Protons, was first tested during his lifetime, while the rockets of the Soyuz family are the profoundly overhauled versions of his R-7 rocket.

Investment in the Angara project has exceeded $ 3 billion over the past twenty years.

According to experts at the Khrunichev Center aerospace corporation, a big advantage of the new rocket carrier is that “it is a universal space rocket system” capable of taking three types of rockets into space: light with a payload of up to 3.5 tonnes, medium with a payload of up to 14.6 tonnes, and heavy with a payload of up to 24.5 tonnes.

Medium lift and heavy lift launch vehicles can take payloads to the geostationary orbit as well.

The first test launch was originally expected to take place on June 27 but it was aborted as the automatic control system stopped the countdown. The launch attempt was delayed for one day only to be cancelled again.

The designer of the first stage engine RD-191 blamed the failure on a fall in the pressure of the oxidizer tank.