MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Russian Defense Ministry is planning to use the Angara-A5 heavy-class carrier rockets to launch satellites from the Vostochny space center in Russia's Far East, a Russian space industry source told Sputnik.

According to the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, the Angara developer and manufacturer, an Angara A5 rocket can carry up to 24.5 metric tons of payload to a low Earth orbit.

"The Khrunichev Center’s contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense includes launches of Angara-A5 carrier rockets both from the Plesetsk cosmodrome and the Vostochny cosmodrome", the source said.

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Construction for a launch pad for the Angara-family launch vehicles at Russia's Vostochny cosmodrome will begin this spring, the press service of Russian construction company Kazan, responsible for the second stage of the space port's overall construction, told Sputnik in January.

The Angara family of space launch vehicles is designed to provide lifting capabilities of between 2 and 40.5 tonnes into low Earth orbit. In development since 1995, it is the first orbit-capable rocket developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, intended to replace older Proton-M rockets.

The light class Angara-1.2pp rocket and the heavy class Angara A5 rocket were launched for the first time in 2014. The second launch of Angara A5 is scheduled for 2019, while a third launch is planned for 2020. Angara-1.2 will reportedly bring the South Korean KOMPSAT-6 satellite to the orbit in 2020.

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