Russia’s Energia space corporation will take part in a tender for development of a new heavy-class carrier rocket, the company said on Monday.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos recently announced a tender for design of a carrier rocket capable of delivering a large variety of spacecraft to low- and high-orbits, including sending manned spacecraft to a Lunar orbit.
“Energia has the most technical and design solutions ready to carry out this project,” Energia’s president and general constructor Vitaly Lopota told reporters in Moscow.
The tender calls for the draft of the rocket’s design to be ready by May 31, 2013.
The new rocket, based on the Angara carrier rocket design, will have two-stage and three-stage variants.
Launches of the new rocket will be carried out from the Vostochny space center currently under construction in the country’s Far East.
Energia Corp. manufactures manned and unmanned spacecraft and is the principal contractor for the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS). If Energia is chosen, it will be the corporation’s first return to making rockets since the Buran program in the 1980’s