“Angara-A5”: what is known about the first rocket developed and created after the collapse of the USSR

April 9 was cancelled the first launch of the Angara-A5 rocket from the Vostochny cosmodrome. Head of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov reportedthat the process of preparing for the launch of the Angara-A5 was stopped by automation. The incident occurred due to a failure in the pressurization system of the central unit oxidizer tank. A second launch attempt is scheduled for April 10. What is known about the Angara-A5 launch vehicle is in the Kommersant reference.

“Angara-A5” is a heavy-class launch vehicle of the “Angara” family. The project was launched in accordance with the decree of Russian President Boris Yeltsin dated January 6, 1995 “On the creation of the Angara space rocket complex.” It is believed that representatives of this family will replace Proton launch vehicles and will make it possible to launch all types of spacecraft directly from Russian territory.

The state customers of the Angara complex are Roscosmos and the Russian Ministry of Defense, the main developer is the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. Vladimir Nesterov’s book “Angara Space Rocket Complex: History of Creation” states that full funding for the project began only in 2005. Previously, customers allocated about 4% of the required funds. As a result, about 19 years passed from the launch of the program to the first flight tests of the Angara-A5.

According to the Roscosmos website, the developers of the Angara space rocket complex used “only Russian components.” When creating Angara project rockets, the modular assembly principle was used for the first time.

The height of the Angara-A5 launch vehicle is 55.4 m, the launch weight is approximately 773 tons (or 815 tons with the Angara-A5B modification). The number of steps is three. The first and second stages use the RD-191 liquid-propellant rocket engine, and the RD-0124A liquid-propellant rocket engine is used on the supports (for the Angara-A5V modification, RD-191M and RD-0150, respectively).

The payload mass in low Earth orbit is 24-24.5 tons, in geostationary transfer orbit – 5.4-8 tons, and in geostationary orbit – 2.8-5 tons (with the Angara-A5V modification – 37.5, 13.3 and 8 tons respectively). To launch the payload, the Briz-M, DM and KVTK upper stages can be used.

When launching the Angara family of launch vehicles, toxic heptyl-based fuel is not used, which reduces environmental risks in the areas where its stages fall and near cosmodromes. Oxygen-kerosene is used as fuel for the Angara-A5 (in the modification of the Angara-A5B – oxygen-kerosene and oxygen-hydrogen).

The first launch of Angara-A5 took place on December 23, 2014 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome. In total, from 2014 to 2024, there were three launches of the Angara-A5 launch vehicle, the third of which was considered “partially successful.”

In June 2020, the Khrunichev Center and the Russian Ministry of Defense signed a contract for the production of four serial Angara-A5 missiles. In the summer of the same year, from the financial report of the Khrunichev Center it became known, that the production of the launch vehicle is estimated at 7 billion rubles – three times more than the cost of the Proton-M rocket. Roscosmos associated the high costs with the location of production in two cities remote from each other – Moscow and Omsk – and promised to reduce the cost to 4 billion rubles when the series starts. According to media reports, the price under the contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense was about 5 billion rubles.

At the end of 2023, Roscosmos announced that the Angara-A5 rocket had been delivered to the Far East for test launches from the new Vostochny cosmodrome. The first launch of Angara-A5 was planned for December 2023, but was postponed to the first quarter of 2024.