A Period of Significant Transition
The capability to launch heavy payloads into orbit is a cornerstone of a major spacefaring nation. It underpins the ability to deploy large national security satellites, build space stations, and send ambitious robotic missions to the distant solar system. For decades, Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, has maintained a robust heavy-lift capability. Today, this sector is in a period of significant transition, retiring its most prolific launcher and introducing a new, modern replacement, all while navigating the complex technical and financial challenges of developing a new generation of super-heavy rockets.
This article examines the status of Russian heavy-lift orbital launch vehicles as of 2025, detailing the rockets that are currently operational, those being phased out, and the ambitious projects planned for the future.
The Modern Workhorse: Angara A5
The primary operational heavy-lift rocket for Russia is the Angara A5. It is the first heavy-lift vehicle designed and built entirely within the borders of the Russian Federation since the fall of the Soviet Union. Its development was a long-term strategic goal to ensure independent access to space for the nation’s most important payloads.
A New Rocket for a New Era
The Angara (rocket family) was conceived in the 1990s with two main goals. The first was to replace the aging Proton-M rocket, which, while effective, relies on highly toxic hypergolic propellant that posed environmental risks and created political friction at its launch site. The second goal was to achieve launch sovereignty. The Proton flies from the Baikonur Cosmodrome , which is located in the independent nation of Kazakhstan and requires Russia to pay leasing fees. The Angara family was designed from the outset to fly from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia and, more recently, from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in the country’s Far East.
Development, led by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center , was a long and difficult process, spanning more than two decades. The first flight of the heavy-lift Angara A5 variant finally occurred in December 2014. As of late 2025, the rocket has had a handful of test and operational flights, with its most recent launch taking place in June 2025. It is now considered active and is gradually taking over the manifest of government and military missions.
Design and Capabilities
The Angara A5’s most significant feature is its modular design. The rocket is not a single, bespoke vehicle but is instead assembled from standardized components called Universal Rocket Modules (URM). The first stage of the Angara A5 consists of five URM-1 modules: four strapped together as boosters and one serving as the central core.
Each URM-1 is powered by a single RD-191 engine. This is a modern, single-chamber engine that burns a mix of liquid oxygen and RP-1 (a highly refined kerosene). This propellant is both more efficient and far less toxic than the Proton’s. The RD-191 itself has a storied lineage, as it’s a derivative of the powerful RD-170 engine that powered the boosters for the Soviet Energia super-heavy launcher.
This modularity, in theory, allows for a family of rockets to be built using the same core components. A single URM-1, for example, forms the basis of the Angara 1.2 light-class rocket. By clustering five of them, Russia gets its heavy-lift A5.
In its current configuration, the Angara A5 can lift approximately 24.5 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO). For higher-energy destinations, like geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) where communications satellites are placed, it uses an upper stage. This is typically the Briz-M, the same upper stage used on the Proton-M, though a more powerful and efficient hydrogen-based upper stage called the KVTK is also planned for future use.
A Future Built at Vostochny
While early Angara A5 flights took place from Plesetsk, the rocket’s long-term future is at Vostochny. The first Angara launch from this new cosmodrome was successfully conducted in 2024, marking a pivotal step in Russia’s strategy to shift its primary launch operations onto its own territory.
An upgraded variant, the Angara A5M, is already in production. This version features upgraded engines and other improvements to increase its payload capacity slightly. Its first mission, expected around 2027, is slated to be the launch of a key module for the planned Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) . This firmly establishes the Angara A5 as the designated vehicle for building Russia’s next-generation space infrastructure in orbit.
The Fading Legend: Proton-M
No discussion of Russian heavy-lift is complete without the Proton. For more than 50 years, the Proton family has been the workhorse of the Soviet and then Russian space programs, launching everything from Salyut and Mir space station modules to the Zarya and Zvezda modules for the International Space Station, as well as countless military satellites and interplanetary probes.
A Storied History
The Proton-M is the last and most powerful operational version of this rocket, which first flew in 2001. Manufactured by the same Khrunichev center that builds Angara, it is a three-stage rocket capable of lifting over 21 metric tons to LEO. Its primary role for decades was in the lucrative commercial launch market, where, paired with its Briz-M upper stage, it was a global leader in launching heavy communications satellites to geostationary orbit.
Its power came at a cost. The Proton’s engines in its first, second, and third stages all use a hypergolic propellant combination of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4). These propellants ignite on contact, making the engines simpler and more reliable in some respects. They are also extremely toxic, carcinogenic, and environmentally damaging.
The Inevitable Retirement
The rocket’s reliance on toxic fuel and its base at Baikonur in Kazakhstan became significant liabilities. Every launch required extensive cleanup operations, and periodic launch failures – which spectacularly dispersed toxic clouds – created intense political and environmental friction with Kazakhstan.
With the development of the cleaner, domestically-launched Angara A5, the Russian government made the decision to phase out Proton. Roscosmos , the Russian state space corporation, announced that production of the rocket would end.
As of late 2025, the Proton-M is effectively retired. Its last flight occurred in March 2023. While a few government missions remained on its manifest, these have been progressively delayed, re-assigned to the Angara, or canceled. A planned launch for an Elektro-L satellite in December 2025, for example, has been indefinitely postponed. The Baikonur launch pads that once thrummed with Proton activity are falling silent as the era of this legendary heavy-lift rocket comes to a close.
Under Development and Planned: The Super-Heavy Ambition
Beyond the immediate replacement of Proton with Angara, Russia has long-term plans to recapture a capability it has not possessed since the 1980s: a super-heavy launch vehicle. A heavy-lift launch vehicle like Angara A5 is defined as lifting 20 to 50 metric tons to LEO. A super-heavy launcher (SHLLV) is in a class above, defined by Russia as being able to lift over 100 metric tons.
Such a rocket is not needed for commercial satellites or for building a LEO space station. It is a vehicle of national prestige and deep-space exploration, essential for sending crews and large hardware to the Moon or Mars.
The Yenisei Project
The primary super-heavy project on the books is the Yenisei (rocket) . Officially approved in 2018, the Yenisei is envisioned as Russia’s ride to the Moon. It is a massive rocket, designed to lift between 100 and 127 metric tons to LEO.
The design for Yenisei is not based on Angara’s modules. Instead, it is planned to be built by clustering the first stages of another new rocket, the Soyuz-5 (also known as Irtysh). The Yenisei’s first stage would consist of six of these Soyuz-5 cores, each powered by a modern, powerful RD-171MV engine – a direct descendant of the same Energia engine family as Angara’s RD-191. A large central core, also based on this technology, would form the rocket’s second stage.
Yenisei is intended to be the launch vehicle for Russia’s new crewed spacecraft, the Orel (Eagle), on missions to the Moon. It would also be used to launch the large modules for a proposed lunar base.
However, the Yenisei project has had a troubled and uncertain life. Shortly after its design was to be finalized, the project was paused in 2021. This halt was due to immense costs, technical re-evaluations, and a strategic debate within Roscosmos about the best path forward. In 2024, it was announced that the project would be resumed in 2025, but its timeline remains long. The first launch is not anticipated until 2033 at the earliest.
The Methane Dilemma and Amur
Part of the reason for the Yenisei’s pause was a “propellant dilemma.” While Yenisei was designed around the well-understood (and highly refined) kerosene fuel of the RD-171, a new technological trend was emerging globally: methane . Methane-fueled engines, burning liquid methane with liquid oxygen, promise higher efficiency, lower cost, and cleaner-burning engines that are much easier to reuse.
Russia’s primary methane rocket project is the Amur (rocket) (also called Soyuz-7). This is a medium-lift rocket, designed to lift 10.5 to 13.6 metric tons to LEO, putting it in a class to replace the workhorse Soyuz-2, not a heavy-lift rocket. Its key feature is a reusable first stage, designed to land propulsively, similar to Western commercial rockets. Development of the Amur is active, with prototype hardware expected to begin testing in 2025 and a first launch planned for 2028-2030.
The debate within Roscosmos was whether it was wise to invest billions in a massive, expendable, kerosene-fueled rocket (Yenisei) when the future of rocketry appeared to be reusable methane. Some officials and engineers pushed to redesign the super-heavy launcher to be methane-based, using the technology being developed for Amur.
While some proposals were drafted for heavy-lift Amur variants – including a 25-ton-capable version that would use three cores – these remain conceptual. For now, the official super-heavy plan has reverted to the kerosene-based Yenisei, even as the methane-based Amur is developed in parallel. This leaves Russia’s long-term heavy-lift strategy split between a concrete, operational vehicle (Angara A5), a legacy rocket (Proton-M), a long-term but uncertain super-heavy project (Yenisei), and a next-generation medium-lift rocket (Amur) that holds the technological key to a different future.
Summary
As of 2025, Russia’s heavy-lift launch capability is defined by a major transition. The legendary and toxic Proton-M rocket is retired, its five-decade career at an end. Its replacement, the modern, domestically-built, and cleaner-burning Angara A5, is now operational and has taken over the manifest of critical government, military, and infrastructure launches from the Vostochny Cosmodrome.
For the future, ambitions remain high but are clouded by financial and strategic uncertainty. The Yenisei super-heavy rocket, a vehicle on the scale of America’s Saturn V, is officially back in development after a pause, but its first flight is the better part of a decade away. Its development runs parallel to the Amur-LNG program, a separate project to create a reusable, methane-fueled rocket that represents a different technological path. How Russia reconciles these different programs will determine its ability to not only maintain its access to orbit but to pursue ambitious goals in deep space.
