MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia carried out the test launch of its Angara-A5 rocket from the Vostochny cosmodrome on Thursday, after two attempts aborted this week due to technical problems.
The launch of the Angara, while it underlines Moscow’s ambitions in the race for space conquest, is also decisive for the Vostotchny cosmodrome, in the Siberian forests of the Russian Far East, called for an increasing role in to reduce Russia’s dependence on the Baikonur cosmodrome, which it rents from Kazakhstan.
“The engine started, the flight is normal. All systems are working normally,” Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said on its live broadcast.
A few minutes later, the rocket was traveling at more than 25,000 kilometers per hour and entered orbit.
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After a first failure on Tuesday, the launch of the space rocket was canceled on Wednesday due to a malfunction in the engine control system.
Russia launched the Angara project – a rocket intended to replace the Proton M rockets in service since the 1960s – a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The first test flight took place in 2014, from the cosmodrome of Plesetsk, followed by another in 2020.
(Reuters reporting; French version Federica Mileo, edited by Sophie Louet)
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