I'm John Baster.

Bob Zimmerman keeps behind the black and we're headed to a very important event at Vastachne, the new Russian

Spaceport, a launch. Bob, what launch?

This is an important launch because Russia needs a new rocket to be able to do any of its proposed space station or future

planetary exploration any man's program it's going to have down the road when

ISS goes away if it's going to have anything it needs this rocket it's's called Ongara. And they have done a bunch

of launches of Ongara in the past, a whole range of launches. It's a rocket that has many

configurations. It could be a small rocket. It could be a very big heavy lift rocket and the heavy list version had

launched once back in 2014 a decade ago and then no launches and then it was

revealed that was serious technical problems with the

rocket itself that required a major redesign. So it's a decade before since

Angarify A5 the big version had launched.

And this is the version they need

to have a manned program and a space station.

So this past week, they had two different blorgerbots shortly before launch, but this week they finally successfully

did a second test launch of Angara A5 and successfully put it in orbit.

It had a dummy payload so it didn't really have anything on board, but it was to test this

rocket.

What makes this important for the Russians is it's demonstrated now it has a rocket that it can put up big modules for a space

station and it can put up major capsules and materials for putting people into

orbit because other versions of on our smaller versions can

replace the Soyuz rocket as well.

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