A total of seven Soyuz carrier rockets are scheduled to be constructed for the Russian Defense Ministry by the end of the year, the general director of Russia's Progress State Research and Production Space Centre, Alexander Kirilin, said Friday. He added that three rockets had already been constructed and delivered.

"The construction of seven Soyuz carrier rockets in 2016 is planned as part of the implementation of the state defense order," Kirilin said during a ceremony to mark the state acceptance of military production.

"Four Soyuz-2.1b carrier rockets are at different stages of construction... The products will be delivered by November 2016 within the deadlines set in the state contracts," Kirilin said.

The Soyuz-2 replaced the Soyuz-U carrier rocket, which was used at the Plesetsk space center from 1973 to 2012. During that period, nearly 430 multi-purpose space vehicles were sent into orbit.

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Russian Space Center to Carry Out Seven Commercial Launches of Proton-M
Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre will carry out up to seven commercial launches of Proton carrier rocket annually, its Director Andrey Kalinovskiy said Tuesday.

The Proton-M is the largest carrier rocket in Russia's fleet of space launch vehicles. The rocket has lifted dozens of Russian-made and foreign satellites into orbit since it was first commissioned into service in 2001.

"Altogether we plan to carry out seven commercial launches of 'Proton' in a year, its composition will depend on customer's request," Kalinovskiy told Izvestiya newspaper in an interview.

He added that the center is now working on the Angara-A5 project, which is scheduled for launch in 2021, trying to construct it as cheap as Proton-M is.

The Angara family of space-launch vehicles is designed to provide lifting capabilities of between 2 and 40,5 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