Russia appears to have conducted a flight test of the Project 4202 vehicle on February 26, 2015 from one of the silos in Dombarovskiy. Project 4202 is believed to be some kind of a hypersonic vehicle that will be delivered by the UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 missile. (See also the earlier post.)
Project 4202 launches have never been officially acknowledged, but bits of information appear here and there and there are enough dots to connect, so there is a fairly high degree of certainty that the launch indeed took place. (I must say that I can claim no credit for finding the dots - most of them have been discovered by others.)
First, TsENKI (Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure) in its 2014 acquisition plan listed two Project 4202-related contracts. In the document, the launch is scheduled to take place in January 2015, but it was later postponed. Industry sources were said to confirm that the test was moved to February.
And indeed, on February 26, 2015 a note on a Russian site, which is known to be well connected and generally reliable, said something to the effect that a test is upcoming. The post has been removed since, but only after it was updated to say that the test was unsuccessful.
Finally, a number of people have found a message posted by someone from Yasnyy (which is the name of the city at the Dombarovskiy missile base) later on February 26. The author said that in Yasnyy people felt a missile launch that took place around 13:00 local time (that would be 8:00 UTC).
The February 26, 2015 launch is not the first flight test of the Project 4202 system - at least one took place around September 26, 2013. It appears that another test took place some time in 2014, maybe in September. All we know about the 2014 test is that there is an unaccounted event in the official record of launches conduced that year (the 2013 4202 launch also was not included in the official account). None of the test appear to have been successful.
I guess we'll have to wait for a successful flight test to see an official report on Project 4202 and learn more about the system.
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It is also possible to pay attention to the start of the Rockot space launcher (with three Gonets satellites) planned for today and suddenly postponed with three satellites:
http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum12/topic14389/
The Rockot and the 4202 use the same boosters 15S300 (1st and 2nd stages of SS-19 ICBM):
http://findtenders.ru/tenders/tender-12048179-provedenie-i-vyidacha-zaklyucheniya-o-pse-do-42-let-rti-dvigateley-15d95-15d96-15d113-15d114-v-sosta
http://www.my-tender.ru/#!/tenders/0173100007012000281
It can direct at certain conclusions...
It is interesting also that the official NPOMash newspaper tells us that for 2015 to firm production still of "two products on RVSN subject" is ordered:
http://www.npomash.ru/press/ru/tribuna130215.htm?l=0
Besides, as it becomes clear, there was a notice around falling of stages:
http://www.mngz.ru/ugra/1034927-v-yugre-upadet-chast-ballisticheskoy-rakety.html
This area is for RS-18 stages from Orenburg region:
http://pda.uralinform.ru/news/society/157977-raketnye-stupeni-nakroyut-nijnevartovskii-raion-neglasno/
http://ura.ru/content/khanti/06-09-2012/news/1052147176.html
On Rockot, it would be strange if the launcher has failed - it's an old and reliable missile. I would think it's the payload. But it's an interesting data point.
Maybe we should expect another test later this year. In September?
Here is one more Yugra story: http://ura.ru/content/khanti/06-09-2012/news/1052147153.html. Since all these stories are from September 2012, it appears that the launch in 2013 was the first in the series (from Dombarovskiy anyway).
The notice of February 25 from Nizhnevartovartovsk N1 TV channel (video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmIPWmXQKss
And the Dombaroskiy site too wrote about this new Nizhnevartovartovsk area:
http://www.dombarovka.ru/news/na-nizhnevartovskii-raion-budut-padat-chasti-zapushchennykh-iz-dombarovskogo-raiona-raket
Pavel, above You wrote:
On Rockot, it would be strange if the launcher has failed - it's an old and reliable missile. I would think it's the payload. But it's an interesting data point.
But today the TASS told us in addition:
http://tass.ru/kosmos/1806760
(!!!???)
Very interesting. I guess "strange" doesn't mean "impossible"
I have to apologize. My sources put this TASS message under big doubt, it is possible to tell that they almost disavowed it...
Yes, it's hard to believe that the launcher was the problem.
By the way, one of the links has the coordinates of the second stage drop area:
эллипс с размерами осей 60×30 км, координатами центра 60°11 ’00"с.ш. 76°04’00«в.д. и азимутом большой оси 35°
It's about 1300 km from Dombarovskiy (in the direction of Kura). What's interesting, this doesn't look like a particularly lofted trajectory, which one would use to test a glider. But it's worth looking into.
Pavel, this it is just absolutely similar to a trajectory in the direction of the Kura ground fields... There are no doubts... Why You had doubts?
Yes, the direction is Kura - there are no doubts there. My question was whether we could tell if the missile flies along a (very) lofted trajectory - it would be more suitable for a glider test. Here is, for example, the trajectory of the U.S. HTV-2 glider.
But we, in the relation to Nizhnevartovsk, have only the second step of the booster site and where there the glider separates, we don't know...
But in general, as speak, it has to be orbital device (with possibility of planning at any time from any direction)...
Perhaps, it is the first article in the Russian mass media on the subject "4202":
http://www.vpk-news.ru/articles/24407
The new review from dancomm:
http://www.dancomm.ru/news/nemnogo_svobodnogo_vremeni_v_subbotu/2015-03-21-119
Well, the VPK authors seemed to check all the sources linked from posts and comments on this site. But they also added a couple of new ones, didn't they?
Yes, added... Now we will wait for reaction (international)... :-)
One of such additions is that the Dukhov VNIIA also works according to this program. It is confirmed by open sources:
http://www.zakupki.rosatom.ru/file.ashx?oid=1747818
The Dukhov VNIIA field of activity is well-known:
http://www.vniia.ru/about/doc/vniia_60.pdf
http://www.vniia.ru/about/index.html
The VPK article speculates that the A35-71 booster is equipped with a Briz-derived third stage. One reason given is that the additional 7 meters afforded by the use of the R-36M silo are too much to explain only the presence of a hypersonic vehicle.
Another piece of evidence given for this is that the purported 26 February launch failure of the A35-71 may have caused the nearly one-month delay in the launch of the Rokot/Briz-KM that eventually launched three Gonets-M satellites plus Kosmos-2504 on 31 March. I suppose the latter argument doesn't make sense. The problem with the A35-71 launch may just as well have been in the first or second stage (and reports about the Rokot delay did indeed suggest it was caused by a problem with the first or second stage, not the Briz-KM).
An argument against the possible use of a Briz-derived stage is that Briz is built by Khrunichev and there are no indications from the published documents that Khrunichev is involved in Project 4202. If A35-71 does carry a third stage, wouldn't that more likely be the post-boost stage of the UR-100N UTTKh (also used on the Strela rocket). This is an NPOMash design.
At any rate, how likely is it that the A35-71 has a third stage and in what way would the hypersonic vehicle benefit from the A35-71 having an upper stage? The VPK article says it would allow the vehicle "to fly in a corridor of 40-60 km without making additional maneuvers". Do the authors mean that the extra velocity imparted by the third stage would allow the vehicle to maintain stable flight at that altitude longer without the use of its aerodynamic surfaces?
I don't know where did they get this Briz stuff - as far as I understand, it was developed for a completely different program (Naryad-V). Project 4202 is essentially the Strela configuration of UR-100NUTTH - http://www.npomash.ru/activities/ru/krk.htm