Launch of the first post-Soviet rocket

Launch of the first post-Soviet rocket

Russia has just written a new page in its spatial history.On Wednesday, at 2 p.m., she took off from the Plessetsk military base, located in the northwest of the country, her first rocket entirely designed after the fall of the USSR.All the launchers developed over the past twenty years were only adaptations of Soviet models.

Called Angara 1.2 pp (for Pervy Polyot, "first flight" in Russian), this new launcher is 42 meters high and should be able to take a payload close to 4 tonnes in low orbit.For this first test, the rocket was content, as expected, of a suborbital flight of 6,000 kilometers and 21 minutes before crashing into the desert Kamchatka peninsula.

Very discreet launch

This inaugural launch was done in all discretion, without live retransmission.It must be said that the abandonment of the previous attempt at the end of June, followed live by Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin, was embarrassing.The countdown had stopped automatically a few minutes before takeoff while the rocket was already on its shooting step (a pressure drop in the oxygen tank is the cause of this period, according to Energomash, the manufacturerof the main engine).The Russians preferred to avoid a new disappointment of this kind.

It is therefore by a simple tweet of the Russian Dmistri Rogozine Dmirom Minister that the success of this historic launch was announced.An official press release from the public company Khrounitchev, having developed the rocket, quickly confirmed the news before the state television channel Ksetva is broadcasting images.

A project more than twenty years old

Lancement de la première fusée post-soviétique

This first test shot marks the realization of a project launched over twenty years ago by former President Boris Yeltsin to reduce the spatial dependence of Russia vis-à-vis the former Soviet republics like Ukraine andKazakhstan.Even today, the light and means of Tsyklon and Zenit are built in Ukraine and almost all of the Russian rockets still take off from the Baikonour cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Angara family of launchers must end this situation.In two decades, the project has evolved a lot.The lightest version, A1-1, with a capacity of two tonnes, was for example abandoned in favor of a light version of Soyuz (Soyuz 2-1V).Priority has been placed on larger capacity launchers: A1-2 (3.8 tonnes), A3 (14.6 tonnes) and A5 (24.5 tonnes).A fifth hypothetical version, even more powerful, A7, could also see the light of day in anticipation of inhabited missions in the solar system (Moon, Mars).

The replacement of the Lourd Proton launcher, which has experienced many setbacks in recent months, is becoming more and more urgent.In addition to its lack of reliability, it is a particularly polluting rocket, especially in the event of an accident.It indeed uses hypergols, that is to say very toxic compounds which are automatically consumed when they are put in the presence of each other.

Kerosene and liquid oxygen

The Angara rockets share, they, a same first floor much less polluting, operating with a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen.Apart from the basic version A1-2, all have additional boosters operating on the same principle.

The A5 version could make its first test flight in 2015, since PlessetSk.An inaugural flight of its inhabited version, A5P, is scheduled for 2018 at the Cosmodrome de Vostochny, under construction in the east of the country.More powerful than the current Soyuz, A5P should be able to take four to six cosmonauts with a board of the international space station, against three currently.

Industry experts think that it will still take almost ten years before the Angara rockets were viable on the commercial level.A deadline that is not so distant in space.