Russia plans to build a new launch complex for the Angara rocket family at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwest of the country by 2019, local media reported Monday.

"The construction schedule has been agreed, a new launch pad will be created taking into account the experience gained in the construction of our first Angara launch complex at Plesetsk," the Izvestia newspaper cited a source in the Russian federal agency for special construction Spetsstroy as saying.

According to the newspaper, the construction of the new launch pad will result in more Angara rockets being launched from Plesetsk than from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East.

The Angara family of space-launch vehicles is designed to provide lifting capabilities of between 2 and 40.5 metric tonnes into low Earth orbit.

It has been in development since 1995 and was the first orbit-capable rocket developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union to replace the older Proton-M rockets.

Source: Sputnik News