Angara LV mockup brought to Vostochny Cosmodrome for trials - Russia's Roscosmos
MOSCOW. June 5 (Interfax) - An operational mockup of the Angara-A5 launch vehicle has been brought to the Vostochny Cosmodrome for trials, Roscosmos said on Monday.
"A train carrying units of an operational mockup of the Angara-A5 launch vehicle (Angara-NZh) and special equipment from the Omsk branch of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center [part of Roscosmos] has arrived at the Vostochny Cosmodrome," the statement said.
Once the cars arrived, specialists began integrated trials of Vostochny's technical and launch sites with Angara-NZh, it said.
"Autonomous integrated trials and evaluation began while Angara-NZh was reloaded on to another transport vehicle and the train departed for Vostochny. They will be completed when the mockup units are unloaded at the technical facility and the [train] car sensors are checked," Roscosmos said.
Roscosmos first deputy head Andrei Yelchaninov said in an interview with Interfax on April 10 that the corporation was finalizing the construction of an Angara-A5 heavy rocket for its maiden launch from Vostochny. He said the rocket would be delivered to the cosmodrome in September this year.
As reported earlier, the inaugural test launch of an Angara LV from Vostochny was planned for December 2023.
Angara is a family of Russia's newest modular-type launch vehicles with various lifting capacities, based on universal rocket modules with oxygen-kerosene engines. The rockets range from light to super-heavy, with a lifting capacity of 3.5 tonnes (Angara-1.2) to 38 tonnes (Angara-A5V) to low near-Earth orbit.
Different modifications of Angara rockets are built using various numbers of universal rocket modules - URM-1 (for the first and second stages) and URM-2 (for the upper stages). The number of universal modules in the first stage determines the lifting capacity of the launch vehicle. URM-1 is powered by the RD-191 liquid-fuel jet engine, designed by NPO Energomash in the Moscow region, while URM-2 has the RD-0124A engine developed by Voronezh-based KBKhA.