Reuters reported that the Russian carrier rocket “Angara-A5” aborted its test launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome for the second time this week.
“A command to cancel the launch has been issued,” the message from the loudspeakers seconds before the rocket’s liftoff from the launch pad in the Russian Far East said.
The day before, the head of the state space corporation “Roscosmos,” Yuri Borisov, said that the automatic safety system had canceled the launch after detecting a defect in the oxidizer tank sealing system.
The launch was postponed by 24 hours.
The project, beset by production delays and technical issues, has suffered another setback with the two aborted launches.
The launch was supposed to be the first for this type of rocket from the new launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in the forests of the Amur Oblast in the Russian Far East.
The Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia hosted the “Angara-A5″‘s previous three launches.
The carrier rocket is 42.7 meters long and can place payloads weighing over 20 tons into orbit.
Due to its proximity to the equator, the “Angara-A5” can deliver heavier payloads into orbit if launched from Vostochny, Russia’s first and only post-Soviet space launch site.
The Plesetsk Cosmodrome is a facility from the Soviet era, during which the previous three successful test launches of the carrier rocket “Angara-A5” were conducted.
The failure comes after the August failure last year of Russia’s lunar mission—the first in 47 years—when the spacecraft “Luna-25” crashed into the surface of Earth’s natural satellite.
TASS reported that they have postponed the launch of the carrier rocket “Angara-A5” for at least 24 hours.
Experts cited by the Russian news agency said that the multiple postponements are part of standard test work and that the history of native cosmonautics remembers many similar examples.
Today’s launch of the carrier rocket “Angara-A5” was again postponed by 24 hours after initially planned for April 9.
According to Russian experts, this is a common situation, especially regarding test launches. They recall that during the formative years of Russian cosmonautics, over 2,500 carrier rocket launches took place, with numerous cases of postponed launches. However, they observed that they did not directly communicate this information and did not maintain any statistics during that period. In this case, it concerns the first launch of the carrier rocket “Angara-A5” from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, and the attention given to it is significant.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia leased the Baikonur Cosmodrome from Kazakhstan and continues to use it for most of its space launches.
The agreement with Kazakhstan allows Russia to continue leasing Baikonur until 2050 for $115 million annually.
While Roscosmos continues to rely on Baikonur, Russian authorities developed Vostochny as a preferred facility for launching the “Angara” rockets. The new cosmodrome’s construction took longer than expected, and it has only seen limited use thus far.
