MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. Russia’s new Angara-A5V carrier rocket will be twice as powerful as its Proton predecessor and will cope with all the country’s space tasks through 2032, state space corporation Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday.
"In this version [A5V], the Angara will be twice as powerful as the Proton. This is not yet a super-heavy carrier but quite a heavy rocket capable of solving all our tasks through 2032," the Roscosmos chief wrote on Facebook.
Roscosmos views the new rocket as the vehicle for the medium-term perspective, Rogozin said. "Roscosmos as the customer has initiated the Amur R&D work for creating a more powerful Angara-A5M and also a KVTK booster and an RD-0150 hydrogen engine for developing a ‘muscular’ third stage," he said.
The Angara is a family of next-generation Russian space rockets. It consists of light, medium and heavy carrier rockets with a lifting capacity of up to 37.5 tonnes. The new family of rockets uses environmentally-friendly propellant components.
Overall, Russia has carried out three Angara launches, all of them from the Plesetsk spaceport: a light Angara-1.2PP blasted off in July 2014 while its heavy version lifted off for the first time on December 23, 2014 and for the second time on December 14, 2020.
The Roscosmos head told TASS in August that the 2021 plan envisaged the launch of heavy Angara-A5 rocket No. 3 with a new Persei booster and a light Angara-1.2 launch vehicle. He also said that a fourth Angara heavy carrier rocket would be ready in 2021. He confirmed these plans on December 14.