Installation of Angara A1.2 on the launchpad

April 30, 2022 - Russia’s Angara 1.2 rocket has launched a payload for the Russian Aerospace Forces, the VKS RF. This is Angara 1.2’s first operational flight, after one suborbital test flight to verify that all systems worked and three test flights of the Angara-A5 variant to prove its ability to launch payloads to a geostationary orbit.

Not much is known about the mission, with the identity of the payload yet to be uncovered and multiple potential payloads possibly onboard the rocket. All that is known is that the spacecraft has been designated Kosmos 2555 after successfully deploying from the rocket.

The most likely payload is a radar satellite, intended for use by the Russian military, that shares a naming scheme and satellite bus with two 6U CubeSats, MKA-N 1 & 2, which were previously launched on a rideshare mission aboard a Soyuz 2.1a in July of 2017. These satellites were deployed in an orbit slightly different than planned and ultimately failed to establish communications with ground stations.

The mission was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Officially founded on January 11, 1957, the Soviet government passed a resolution for the founding of a special military site, designed to test the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile. Since its inception, the Cosmodrome has gone on to launch the R-7 derived Soyuz, the Cosmos-3M, Rokot, Tsyklon, and the most recent addition to the launchers, Angara.

The first launch of a satellite from Plesetsk occurred on March 17, 1966, with a Vostok-2 lifting Kosmos 112, a first-generation Soviet optical reconnaissance satellite to low Earth orbit. The satellite was similar to the United State’s Corona satellites, as it took film photographs and returned the film to Earth in capsules.

By 1997, 33 years after the first launch, the Cosmodrome had hosted over 1,500 launches, making it the most active Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union and Russia at the time.

During the Soviet Union’s existence, Plesetsk was primarily used for launches carrying classified military payloads, most often the “Zenit” photo-reconnaissance satellites, launched in the 1970s through the 1980s. Due to the classified nature of the Cosmodrome, the USSR did not officially acknowledge its existence until 1983.

The launch site was first discovered by a British physics teacher named Geoffrey Perry and his students, who carefully analyzed the orbit of Kosmos 112, and were able to deduce that the satellite was not launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first pictures of a launch from Plesetsk were of the Meteor 1-2 satellite launching in 1969, and bystanders were able to observe and capture pictures from Finland.

The Cosmodrome has only become busier in recent years, as Kazakhstan, now an independent country, has started charging Russia 115 million dollars annually for the use of the land, and there are security concerns about launching classified missions from complexes not owned by Russia.

Today’s launch is the first time that Angara launched operationally, and was the first flight of an Angara 1.2, a variant of the vehicle designed just for delivering payloads to a low Earth orbit (LEO).

While the Angara 1.2 can only launch 3,800 kg to LEO, the more capable version, the Angara A5, has flown the majority of the Angara missions to date. Angara A5 uses four strap-on URM-1s, a larger second stage, and can opt to use a third stage based on the requirements of the mission.

This launch is the first of three planned Angara launches in 2022, with one more launch planned for Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency, and one commercial flight for South Korea.

The next planned flight of the Angara-A5 is planned for July and is set to launch an Ekspress-AMU communications satellite to a geostationary orbit. Ekspress satellites have been launching since October of 1994, and are operated by the Russian State Company for Satellite Communications.

The final planned flight of the year is set to launch KOMPSAT-6 for the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). KOMPSAT-6, also referred to as Arirang-6, is a synthetic aperture radar satellite, and is planned to deliver images with a 0.5-meter ground resolution. The satellite bus is built by KARI, while Airbus Defense and Space are providing the sensors on the satellite.

The status of the KOMPSAT-6 launch contract is unclear, as almost all international customers have canceled their launch contracts for Russian rockets as a result of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Angara is not scheduled to fly again until December of 2023 when it launches the first uncrewed test flight of Russia’s Oriol crew capsule, which is intended to carry cosmonauts to the moon.