Dmitry Rogozin announced the transfer of the test of the Orel spacecraft to 2024
Image: Roscosmos
The launch of the Russian Orel spacecraft has been postponed from 2023 to 2024, Dmitry Rogozin, CEO of Roskosmos, said in an interview with Russian Space magazine.
According to the manager, the Angara-A5 heavy rocket will be delivered to the Vostochny Cosmodrome approximately in the summer of 2023. “With its help, as part of the flight tests of the Orel spacecraft in 2024, we will carry out the next stage of testing: the firing of the ship by the emergency rescue unit at the stage of operation of the first stage of the Angara-A5 rocket at an altitude of 10-15 kilometers at maximum velocity head,” — said the leader.
Rogozin clarified that this test will allow working out soft landing systems and “testing the launch complex, the interaction interfaces of the ship and the third stage of the Angara-A5, understanding the nuances associated with the fall fields of the separated parts and stages of the rocket.”
Subsequently, Orel tests are planned to be continued on the Angara-A5M rocket, which differs from the Angara-A5 in a more powerful RD-191M engine and lightweight design. “In April 2024, a flight copy of the ship will appear for testing, first in an unmanned mode, and then in a manned one,” the head of the state corporation specified.
In February, the High-Tech White Paper, posted on the website of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development (MED), reported that a number of modern foreign rockets outperform the new carriers that Roscosmos has, for example, in the use of reusable technologies that reduce the cost of services.
