MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - Russia's Soyuz-5 medium-haul rocket will be equipped with the engine accident prevention system, which will be monitoring the engine's status and work parameters for possible irregularities, the rocket's chief designer Alexander Cherevan said.
"Soyuz-5 will have the engine accident prevention system. Throughout the period of operation, which begins with the launch, the system will be monitoring the engine status by work parameters in the cyclic mode with the duration of several milliseconds. The system is capable of detecting and preventing a pending emergency, timely stopping the engine, and sending the 'accident' signal to the payload," the Progress Space Rocket Center website quoted Cherevan as saying.
Russian space rockets have never had such systems before, Cherevan said, adding that the system would be installed in both the first and second stages of the rocket.
"In the event of the first stage engine's accident, it will save the rocket and the launch pad, and during the second stage's flight, it will disconnect two chambers of the faulty block and keep the other two chambers running if the rocket is able to continue the flight using one engine block," he said.
Soyuz-5 dubbed Irtysh was designed by Energia Rocket Space Corporation. Its unmanned test launches are slated for 2022-2023.
The rocket is expected to be used for the delivery of the new re-usable transport spacecraft Oryol (formerly Federatsiya) to the near-earth orbit. Its manned flight and the docking with the International Space Station (ISS) is expected in 2024; however, later it will not be used for brining ISS expedition to space.
On August 21, 2019, the Aerospace Committee of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry told Interfax that the first Soyuz-5 rocket launch from the Kazakhstani-Russian Baiterek compound at Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2022.