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State commission clears Angara-A5 for launch from Vostochny

The launch from Pad 1A is scheduled for Thursday noon Moscow time (9:00 a.m. GMT) on April 11, the state-run Roscosmos space corporation said

VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME /Amur Region/, April 11. /TASS/. A state commission ruled that an Angara-A5 heavy rocket with the Orion booster was ready for launch on Thursday noon Moscow time (9:00 a.m. GMT), the state-run Roscosmos space corporation told reporters.

"A state commission ruled at the Vostochny space launch facility today that the first Angara-A5 space rocket is cleared for fuelling and launch," Rosscosmos said.

The launch from Pad 1A is scheduled for Thursday noon on April 11, according to the commission’s ruling. Approximately 12 minutes after the blastoff, the Orion booster with a test payload will separate from the rocket and continue its flight to the designated orbit.

The launch was initially slated for noon Tuesday (9:00 a.m. GMT) but was aborted automatically two minutes before the blastoff. State Space Corporation Roscosmos Head Yury Borisov said the cancellation was caused by a failure in the oxidizer tank’s pressurizing system.

The blastoff was postponed until Wednesday noon, but it also did not take place as the command to cancel the launch and prepare the rocket for a 24-hour stoppage was issued. No irreversible processes requiring the rocket’s dismantling have occurred," the Roscosmos head said, adding that rocket launches cancelled for technical reasons were "quite a routine thing" for engineers and designers.

Angara’s first launch from Vostochny

The aborted launches were expected to be the first for the Angara rocket from the Vostochny spaceport: previously, these launch vehicles blasted off only from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwestern Russia.

The first three launches of Angara heavy rockets from the Plesetsk spaceport took place on December 23, 2014, December 14, 2020 and December 27, 2021. The launch of the light Angara rocket took place on July 9, 2014 (the suborbital test flight), on April 29, 2022 (the orbital flight) and October 15, 2022 (the orbital flight).

The Angara test-launch from the Vostochny spaceport will commence flight development tests of the Amur rocket system that comprises the Angara carrier rocket and the spaceport’s infrastructure. The construction of infrastructure for the Angara rocket at the Vostochny cosmodrome began in 2019 and late last year the operational capacity of the technical compound and the launch pad was confirmed during the tests of the Angara-NZh, a full-size mockup of the Angara-A5 rocket. Technological solutions allow for launching all types of Angara rockets from one launch pad: from light to heavy carrier vehicles.

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