Angara Rocket

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• published: 16 Jan 2016
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During 2015, Russian engineers re-tailored the prospective human space flight program for lighter, cheaper rockets to reflect severe cuts in the nation's space budget in the previous year. According to current plans, the next-generation spacecraft, PTK NP, designed to replace Soyuz, could carry its first crew in 2024, followed by a manned mission into lunar orbit in 2025. The decision of the new leadership at Roskosmos at the beginning of 2015 to put off the development of the super-heavy Moon rocket beyond 2025 required finding the new launch vehicle for the new-generation spacecraft. Since the agency simultaneously endorsed upgrading the medium-class Angara-5 rocket into an Angara-A5V (or Angara-5V for short) variant, engineers at RKK Energia, the PTK NP developer, attempted to fit the spacecraft and its missions into this much smaller rocket. The Angara would have no problem to insert the PTK NP into the low Earth orbit, however an orbital assembly would be required for practically any deep-space mission, which has been proclaimed as the main purpose of the PTK NP project. With a projected payload capacity of 37.5 tons, it would take a pair of Angara-5V launchers to place the PTK NP into an orbit around the Moon or into the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points. Even more problematic, four such rockets would be needed to support an expedition to the surface of the Moon. For comparison, NASA intended to rely on a single SLS super-heavy launcher to insert its Orion vehicle into the lunar orbit. Under most optimistic scenarios in the Russia's long-term space strategy, the circumlunar mission based on Angara-5V vehicles could be accomplished around 2025 and the lunar landing around 2029. As in the several previous years, Roskosmos was largely mum about the progress in the development and testing of the PTK NP spacecraft. It is known that RKK Energia started the year hoping to win the agency's contract, which would see the PTK NP project through its first unmanned test launch in 2021. RKK Energia also announced that it had planned to begin issuing working and design documentation for the spacecraft and manufacture prototypes and flight-worthy hardware for the project. In April, RKK Energia confirmed that the crew cabin for the PTK NP would be made of a composite material replacing the 1570C aluminum alloy to save mass. The move was apparently a part of weight-cutting measures demanded by Roskosmos, in order to fit the PTK NP into the Angara-5V rocket. At the Moscow Air and Space Show in August 2015, RKK Energia demonstrated an updated mockup of the descent module and a full-scale prototype of the crew cabin made of composite materials. As it turned out, the composite structure had been manufactured in Germany even though RKK Energia officials had previously pledged to keep the design free of foreign components in the face of Western sanctions. Two other prototypes of the spacecraft for certification and flight tests were promised in 2016, but little is known about the current status of this work or the flight test program. On August 26, Roskosmos announced a contest for a new name for the spacecraft, which included a public poll coducted from December 4 to December 23. The results approved by a jury chaired by the head of Roskosmos Igor Komarov were announced only on January 15, 2016. The new ship would be named Federatsiya, a Russian word for 'federation'. Referring to the political structure of the Russian state, the name continued a tradition of the Soyuz spacecraft, whose name meant 'union', reflecting the official name of the Soviet state -- the Soviet Union. Runner-up names in the contest, such as Gagarin and Vektor, were reserved for future space projects.