MOSCOW. Nov 9 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia has scheduled the first test launch of the Soyuz-2-1B carrier rocket with a new third-stage engine for 2006, the Russian Federal Space Agency reported on Tuesday.
"The new third-stage engine will add more than a tonne to the lifting capacity of the next derivative of the Russian Soyuz-2 carrier rocket, named Soyuz-2-1B," the report reads.
According to it, the first test launch of the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket, performed at the Plesetsk cosmodrome on Monday, is of great importance.
"The Soyuz-2 carrier rocket is intended for ensuring Russia's completely independent access to space," the report stresses.
The press service said that all components of the new rocket are made in Russia and that the rocket ensures orbiting of all kinds of medium spacecraft from Plesetsk.
It added that specifications of all rocket stages were improved as a result of Soyuz's modernization. A new digital control system was developed to ensure precise orbiting of payload, and new telemetric systems were introduced.
Head of the Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov said earlier that a Soyuz-2 modification will also be used for launching spacecraft from the Kourou space center in French Guiana. The Kourou project is being implemented jointly by the agency, the TsSKB-Progress design bureau based in Russia's Samara, as well as by the Starsem, EADS and Airanespace companies.