MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th September, 2020) Developers will start making the Soyuz-5 rocket (Irtysh) that Russia is planning in order to replace Ukraine's Zenit launch vehicles in mid-2021, General Director of Russian SRC (space rocket center) Progress, Dmitry Baranov, told Sputnik.
"At the start of next year we will get a new aluminum alloy [1580] that we will use to make a small amount of testing samples, and I think that by the middle of the year [2021], possibly, we will already start making designs specifically for the launch vehicle," Baranov said.
In 2016 Russia started working on the new Soyuz-5 (Irtysh) rocket to replace the Zenit launch vehicles produced in Ukraine.
In July 2018, Russian space agency Roscosmos signed an $8.1 million (61.2 billion rubles) contract with Rocket and Space Corporation Energia for the design and testing of Soyuz-5. SRC Progress will develop and manufacture the new launch vehicle.
In July of this year, Roscosmos announced that its subsidiary Energia had signed an agreement with Kazakh company Baiterek to create a Soyuz-5 launch complex at the Baikonur space center.
