PLESETSK, Russia. Feb 18 (Interfax) - A mockup of an Angara carrier rocket was installed on a launch pad at Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Monday in testing the Angara family of space launch vehicles, which is expected to make Russia's Space Defense Forces independent of foreign spaceports technology, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
A schedule approved by the Defense Ministry and Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) slates the first launch of an Angara 1 light rocket for the second quarter of 2014, the spokesman, Col. Dmitry Zenin, told Interfax-AVN.
Fitting Plesetsk Cosmodrome with launching infrastructure for Angara rockets is one of the priorities in developing the spaceport.
The Angara family is being developed under the State Armament Program and Federal Space Program, which were launched in 2006 and will remain in effect until 2015.
The creation of the launching infrastructure for it is based on a program entitled "Development of Russian Cosmodromes in 2006-2015."
The Angara family will be able to carry practically the entire range of Russian military payloads that may be needed, and to put them in orbits at any altitude and inclination that Russia's military is expected to use.
Moreover, Angara rockets will not use aggressive and toxic heptyl-based fuel, and so their use will be more environmentally friendly for the region where the spaceport is situated and for areas where the rockets will be dropping their detaching stages.