Roscosmos Launches Third Angara A5 Demonstration Which Fails

On Monday, December 27 at 2:00pm ET (14:50 UTC), Roscosmos launched the third and final demonstration mission of the Angara A5 rocket from Site 35/1 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. It was going to take a dummy payload to geo-stationary orbit but the Persey upper stage failed and the payload stayed in low earth orbit together with Persey. The two previous flights happened in 2014 and 2020. It was also the first flight of Angara A5 with the Persey upper stage. Angara A5 is planned to replace the Proton-M rocket that has been flying since 2001. Notable payloads planned to fly on it are the ROSS space station modules, new lunar probes, and Oriol, Russia's new crewed spacecraft in development. Oriol will have two uncrewed test flights in 2023 and 2024 respectively and a crewed test flight in 2025. A crewed lunar flyby of Oriol is planned to launch in 2029. This launch was the 141st orbital attempt of 2021.