MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. The launch of an Angara-A5 heavy carrier rocket originally scheduled for Friday has been postponed due to a ground equipment failure 1.5 minutes before the blastoff, a source close to the Russian defense ministry told TASS on Friday.

"The automatic controls rejected the launch 1.5 minutes before the Angara blastoff," the source said.

According to the source, the carrier rocket is in working condition. The launch was rejected because of a ground equipment failure.

Two sources in Russia’s space industry told TASS earlier that the Angara launch from the Plesetsk spaceport in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region had been postponed to December 24 due to ground equipment problems and weather conditions.

Angara is a family of Russia’s launch vehicles. Its universal components are manufactured at the Omsk-based industrial association PO Polyot (an affiliate of the Roscosmos-run Khrunichev Center). There have been two launches of the Angara heavy rockets from Plesetsk - on December 23, 2014 and December 14, 2020.