The second launch of the Angara-A5 heavy rocket in six years, which took place from the Plesetsk cosmodrome (Arkhangelsk region), was shown on video. The corresponding video was published by Zvezda TV channel.
The carrier launched on Monday, December 14, at 08: 50 Moscow time. Before that, this rocket was launched only once — in December 2014.
"12 minutes after launch, the orbital block consisting of the Briz-M upper stage and an inseparable overall mass layout [weighing 2.4 tons] of the payload separated from the third stage of the rocket," the defense Ministry said.
They also said that the test launch was successful.
In November, the agency, citing a source in the rocket and space industry, reported that the rocket already taken to the launch table "revealed an underestimated insulation resistance between the second and third blocks," as a result of which the carrier was removed from the site, and the launch was postponed to December.
In the same month, the chief designer of the Angara complex, Dmitry Petrov, said that the heavy carriers of the first and second flight tests do not differ structurally from each other.
In October, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin said that the first flight test of the Angara-A5 produced by the Khrunichev Center in December 2014 " did not confirm the customer's requirements", because "the output mass was lower than necessary."
In August, the manager, during a report to Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov at the Army 2020 forum, promised that this rocket would launch in November.
the khrunichev center is the most problematic and unprofitable enterprise of roscosmos. one of the failed projects of the company is the development of a family of carriers "angara", which in the heavy version should replace the "proton-m". the creation of missiles has been going on for more than a quarter of a century and has required more than three billion dollars (according to other estimates — more than five). Currently, the debts of the Khrunichev Center exceed 80 billion rubles, which is equivalent to half of the annual budget of the state corporation.
