Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket which was on Tuesday ready for launch was immediately aborted minutes before lift off.
“The command ‘abort launch’ has been issued,” a flight controller said in a live broadcast by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos.
The flight controller ordered a 24-hour ‘shutdown’ but did not give the reason for the delay.
This is a second instance of a delayed Russian space flight in less than a month.
The Angara A5 heavy-lift rocket was due to be launched for the first time from Vostochny, a spaceport in Far East Russia’s Amur region. Previously, all three Angara A5 launches were based out of northern Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
Roscosmos, meanwhile, has emphasized the rocket’s smaller ecological footprint in areas near launch sites and drop zones because it does not use “aggressive and toxic propellants.”
Commissioned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union over concerns that an independent Ukraine might withhold deliveries of vital components, Angara A5 is intended to succeed Russia’s Proton launcher.
Late last month, the launch of a Russian Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft to the International Space Station was postponed at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for two days.
Roscosmos chief Yury Borisov said a “voltage dip” had occurred in a chemical power source during the final pre-launch preparations.
