Proton replacement awaits Vostochny completion for GTO missions
ILS has started selling the next-generation Angara rocket family for certain kinds of missions according to the commercial launch provider’s president, Phil Slack.
Speaking at the…
Proton replacement awaits Vostochny completion for GTO missions
ILS has started selling the next-generation Angara rocket family for certain kinds of missions according to the commercial launch provider’s president, Phil Slack.
Speaking at the Satellite 2015 conference in Washington DC, Slack said Angara is set to become fully commercially available in 2021 and will signal the end of the workhorse Proton.
“ILS is marketing Angara right now,” Slack said.
“Today the only active launch site that’s capable of launching Angara is Plesetsk, which is within the article circle and so it is not conducive for launching payloads to GTO. That said, it works for any payloads going to a polar orbit or LEO, so we are actively looking for customers for the single core version [Angara 1], which has a lift capability of three metric tonnes to LEO.
“There is also a potential three core version [Angara 3] that has not flown yet but will have the capability to launch 14 metric tonnes to LEO.”
Meanwhile, Andrey Kalinovskiy, the new head of Khrunichev, which manufactures both Angara and Proton, has said the heavy-lift Angara 5 will have its second launch in 2016.
Kalinovskiy added that a real customer for the payload on the next launch was being sought.
“There are a few technical issues which need to be resolved so once we get the clearance from our specialists we will name the customer,” Kalinovskiy said.
Angara 5 is the heavy lift variant of the next-generation system and is designed to be able to take 7.5 metric tonnes to geosynchronous transfer orbit.
Its maiden voyage was as in December when it successfully launched from snowy Plesetsk in northern Russia.
Russia currently only uses the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, 46 degrees north of the equator, for GTO missions, and that launchpad is not designed for Angara.
That means ILS will have to wait until the 342 square-mile Vostochny Cosmodrome – under construction in the far east of Russia – is complete. Slack estimates that it will be ready for Angara purposes by around 2021.
Between 2021 and 2025 Angara will be introduced and the Proton will be phased out. In the meantime, Kalinovskiy has said that Khrunichev has secured a state-backed loan to the tune of US$636m to improve the reliability of Proton.
