First Angara heavy-lift rocket's payload moved to junk orbit - general design engineer
MOSCOW. Jan 13 (Interfax-AVN) - The non-detachable mockup of a payload with the Briz-M upper stage launched into space on December 23 atop the Angara-A5 heavy-lift launch vehicle (LV) has been moved to the graveyard orbit, the LV's general design engineer Vladimir Nesterov told Interfax-AVN on Tuesday.
"We spent an hour and a half at the geostationary (orbit), following which two firings of the upper stage engine moved the orbital unit, consisting of the Briz-M and the payload mockup, to the graveyard orbit," Nesterov said.
According to the U.S space monitoring system, currently the orbital unit is on the elliptic orbit with the apogee of around 36,000 kilometers and the perigee of around 450 kilometers. The orbit inclination is 60 degrees.
The Angara-A5 heavy-lift LV, designed and made by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, lifted off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome for the first time in the morning of December 23, delivering a payload mockup from Russia to the geostationary orbit for the first time.
The Angara rocket space complex was commissioned by the Russian Defense Ministry and Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to the Khrunichev Center, its head designer and manufacturer.
The Angara space rocket complex is being built around a cluster of light-, medium- and heavy-class rockets (Angara-1.2, Angara-3, Angara-5 and Angara-7) capable of delivering payloads weighing between 3,800 and 35,000 kilograms to low earth orbits. Angara can deliver virtually the entire spectrum of payloads for the Russian Defense Ministry across the required range of orbit altitudes and inclinations, including the geostationary orbit.
Angara-A5 is a heavy-lift rocket. Its liftoff weight is 773 tonnes. The payload that it can deliver to the low orbit can weigh up to 24 tonnes. These rockets are ecologically safe as they use kerosene and liquid oxygen as propellants.
All Angara LVs are launched from a universal launch pad. The Angara-1.2PP light rocket the first launch) with a non-detachable payload mockup was launched successfully from Plesetsk for the first time on July 9, 2014.