OMSK. Aug 8 (Interfax) - The Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center will build about 15 heavy Proton-M launch vehicles within the next eight years, a source at Khrunichev told Interfax.
"There are plans to build about 15 Proton-M rockets in the coming years for a little more than 20 missions, which should be accomplished by late 2025. The ecological Angara rocket will replace the Proton-M, which runs on toxic heptyl," the source said.
Khrunichev has no plans to create new modifications of the Proton-M, he said.
Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said while he was deputy prime minister that the Proton program will be shut down soon and the Angara launch vehicles will be used instead. After he became head of Roscosmos, Rogozin said that Khrunichev was starting to build Angara-A5 and Angara-A5M rockets.
A Khrunichev source told Interfax in late May that financial problems had prompted the center to stop modifying Proton rockets, including the medium Proton-L and the Proton-SL-2F rocket, a derivative of the three-stage Proton-M featuring a Briz-M booster.
Work on a light Proton-L is not taking place, either.
A number of media outlets have cited Andrei Pankratov, the deputy general director of the Center for Foreign Economic Activity, as saying that Khrunichev hoped to launch 24 Proton rockets of various modifications by 2025, using traditional Proton-M rockets and their light modification, Proton-L (which foreign clients called Proton Medium), without a third stage.