SAMARA, February 10. /TASS/. The Progress Space Rocket Center (part of the state space corporation Roscosmos) has no doubts that it will cope with the task of developing a Soyuz-5 carrier rocket and complete the work on time, Progress CEO Dmitry Baranov said on Wednesday.
"There are no doubts that we will cope with the program and make the rocket. We have well-established interaction with associated enterprises, have concluded contracts for all the systems and made large advance payments: from 50% to 80% of all advances have been paid to all associated enterprises under the experimental design work. These are the advance payments for test prototypes and three flight models. To a large extent, [the launch date] depends not on the carrier rocket: the enterprise is due to deliver it in 2023," the chief executive said.
The Soyuz-5 rocket has become the enterprise’s largest project, the Progress chief said. The enterprise has received two mock-up engines for dynamic and static trials of the first and second stages, he added.
"In March, a delegation from Kazakhstan will most likely arrive. This will be related to the Soyuz-5," Baranov said.
As TASS reported, the updated agreement between the governments of Kazakhstan and Russia on establishing the Baiterek compound at the Baikonur spaceport defines the sides’ responsibilities under the project, the withdrawal of ground-based space infrastructure facilities of the Zenit-M launch site from the lease and its transfer to the Kazakh side for upgrade.
Specifically, the Kazakh side is responsible for creating the ground-based infrastructure of the Baiterek space rocket compound by upgrading the available Zenit-M launch site. Russia is responsible for developing Soyuz-5 and Soyuz-6 carrier rockets and plans their launches from that compound. The first launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023.