|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Angara-1.2 flies its fourth mission The light version of the Angara rocket lifted off from Plesetsk on March 15, 2025, carrying multiple military payloads during its fourth mission since the introduction of the vehicle in 2022.
The fourth Angara-1.2 mission at a glance:
In early March 2025, Russian authorities issued sea- and air-traffic warnings in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean, whose coordinates matched the areas appropriate for the impact of the first stage of the Angara-1.2 rocket and its payload fairing, when heading to a near-polar orbit with an inclination 82.5 degrees from Plesetsk. Simultaneously, an area off the West Coast of Africa was declared dangerous for navigation. It matched the distance from Plesetsk to the impact of Angara's second stage for missions heading to a near-polar orbit. According to the advisories, the launch was scheduled between March 15 and 16, 2025, which was confirmed with unofficial reports on the Russia social media predicting a liftoff of the Angara-1.2 rocket from Site 35 around 13:50 Moscow Time (6:50 a.m. EDT) on March 15, 2025. On March 15, Russian sources quoting Roskosmos said that the military launch of an Angara-1.2 rocket had been planned between 13:30 and 14:30 Moscow Time. The ground track of the mission was to go over territories of the Mezensky, Plesetsk, Primorsk and Kholmogorsk districts of the Arkhangelsk Oblast (Region). However, later in the day, unofficial reports said that the launch had been postponed for 24 hours until March 16, 2025. On March 16, 2025, Roskosmos announced that Angara-1.2 launch vehicle lifted off at 13:50 Moscow Time with multiple spacecraft for the Ministry of Defense. According to the Russian military, the spacecraft reached their target orbits as scheduled and were taken under control by the ground assets of the Air and Space Forces, VKS. Several hours after the launch, the US Space Force catalogued three objects associated with the mission:
The orbital parameters of the mission suggested the latest launch of a Rodnik satellite trio. The satellites, intended for classified communications, likely represented a long-delayed modernized versions developed under the Klyuch project, which aimed to replace foreign avionics with domestic hardware.
|
|
|
