Russia successfully launched a new generation rocket

Russia successfully launched the new generation Angara rocket, the space agency Roskosmos announced today.

The Angara-A5 rocket took off last night from the Peseck military cosmodrome in the north of the country, the Roscosmos agency said in a statement.

The head of Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozin, announced via Twitter that the launch was successful.

It was the third test launch since 2014 of the Angara rocket, which was developed as part of a program designed to replace the aging Proton launch vehicles, whose technology dates back to the 1960s.

Angara, named after a river in Siberia, uses cleaner technology and kerosene-oxygen rocket engines, which are far less polluting than those fueled by Proton rockets.

However, the program, whose idea originates from the 1990s, is late and the deadlines that were set when the first test was carried out in 2014 were not met.

Russia's space sector has been hit by a series of corruption scandals, budget cuts, delays and embarrassing technical incidents since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The sector has been trying to put on a better face in recent months, announcing, among other things, plans for ambitious space tourism, such as the recent launch of a Japanese billionaire into orbit.