Russia's New Super-Heavy Rocket to Orbit Satellite for First Time in 2016

OMSK (Sputnik) – Russia’s newest heavy rocket carrier Angara-A5 will orbit a commercial satellite for the first time in 2016, the head of the Khrunichev Center said Wednesday.

“[The launch will be in] 2016, everything depends on the space apparatus. I think that this will be a commercial launch, but I don’t know if it will be a foreign or Russian apparatus,” Andrei Kalinovsky told journalists.

The Angara family of space launch vehicles has been in development since 1995. According to Roscosmos, new Angara rockets will give Russia independent access to space and opportunity to reach a new level in technological development.

The heavy-class Angara-5 rocket, part of the Angara family of rockets designed to replace the Proton used previously to put space vehicles into a low Earth orbit, was first successfully launched in December 2014.

The family's super-heavy version that Roscosmos' Komarov announced would be launched within the next decade expects to have a much higher payload and would require a separate launch pad.