MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/. The Khrunichev Space Center is switching over from the production of Proton-M carrier rockets to the output of Angara-A5 and Angara-A5M launchers, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said during his visit to the enterprise on Friday.

"The enterprise is by its totality both significant and strategically important, considering that this enterprise is completing, largely speaking, the production of Proton-M carrier rockets in the near-term perspective and is beginning the output of and the transition to the series of the Angara-A5 rocket and its modernized Angara-A5M version as its trials are nearing completion," Rogozin said.

By decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Angara-A5 carrier rocket must be launched from the Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s Far East by 2021, he noted.

By this time, all the construction works, the delivery of technological equipment, its assembly and tests should have been completed, the vice-premier stressed.

Correspondingly, similar and no less complex works should be conducted with the rocket as well to ensure that it can take off from the Vostochny cosmodrome by the end of 2021, Rogozin said.

The Angara is a family of Russian carrier rockets of different classes, from the light to the heavy versions, that have been developed to replace Proton-M and Rokot launchers. As compared to them, the new family uses environmentally friendly fuel components.

So far, only two launches have taken place, with both of them from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in north Russia: a light Angara-1.2PP rocket blasted off in July 2014 and a heavy Angara-A5 took off in December 2014.