The first test-launch of an Angara-A5 heavy carrier rocket from the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East has been postponed for the second time by at least 24 hours, a TASS correspondent reported from the scene.

An announcement made through loudspeakers at the Vostochny spaceport said that the launch had been halted and the work supervisors should prepare for a 24-hour stoppage.

The first test-launch of the Angara-A5 heavy carrier rocket from the Vostochny spaceport was initially scheduled for 12:00 p.m. Moscow time (9:00 a.m. GMT) on April 9 but the liftoff was automatically canceled two minutes before the launch. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Head Yury Borisov explained later that the technical malfunction had been caused by a failure in the pressurizing system of the central unit’s oxidizer tank. He said that the launch date had been tentatively rescheduled for April 10.

The aborted launch was expected to be the first for the Angara rocket from the Vostochny spaceport: previously, these launch vehicles blasted off only from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwestern Russia.

The first three launches of Angara heavy rockets from the Plesetsk spaceport took place on December 23, 2014, December 14, 2020 and December 27, 2021. The launch of the light Angara rocket took place on July 9, 2014 (the suborbital test flight), on April 29, 2022 (the orbital flight) and October 15, 2022 (the orbital flight).