Russia's first Angara space launch vehicle finally launched at third attempt

The Orion upper stage of the Angara-A5 heavy rocket launched the Gagarinets small satellite into low Earth orbit, Roscosmos said on its Telegram channel.

Photo: TG Energia is licensed under public domain

"The Cubesat 3U format satellite was created by Russian private company Avant Space and is intended to test elements of the service platform,” the state corporation said.

After the launch of the Gagarinets, the upper stage continued its work.

The first launch of the Angara-A5 rocket with the Orion upper stage took place at the Vostochny Cosmodrome at the third attempt. The previous two attempts on April 9 and 10 were aborted.

Angara is the first space launch vehicle that was developed in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. There are several types of the rocket with A5 being the heavy version that can launch up to 24.5 tons of cargo into low Earth orbit. Russian engineers are currently developing a modification of the rocket to launch up to 37 tons of payload into space.