MOSCOW: Russia was forced to abandon yesterday’s debut launch of its first new space rocket since the Soviet era when the Angara booster cut out during a final countdown watched by President Vladimir Putin via video link from the Kremlin.
Angara is seen as a test of Russia’s ability to turn around a once-pioneering space industry struggling to recover from a loss of highly trained specialists and years of budget curbs. It is also part of a move to consolidate the space programme on Russian soil, breaking dependence on other ex-Soviet republics.
A senior military commander told Putin an automatic system had aborted the launch, without giving a reason for the delay, but that it had been put back for 24 hours until Saturday.
More than two decades in the making, the new generation rocket is a centrepiece of Putin’s plan to reform the once-pioneering space industry and launch satellites from a new space port being built in Russia’s far east.
The video link showed the Angara-1.2PP rocket begin to shake in its start position at the northern Plesetsk military launch pad, but a silence descended on the Kremlin conference room as the seconds stretched out and the launch failed to go ahead.
“The automatic system aborted the launch,” Alexander Golovko, commander of Russia’s Air and Space Defence Forces told Putin, who ordered a report on the cause of the delay.
Reuters
