Angara A5, A Russian rocket blasted off for a test flight on Thursday at the third try, after previous launch attempts earlier this week were aborted in the final seconds of countdown.

A live broadcast showed the flagship Angara A5, a powerful spacecraft designed to carry heavy payloads into low Earth orbit, took off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East.

The Roscosmos space agency said in a social media post shortly after the launch, that the rocket worked according to plan, noting that the upper stage separated, and put the test payload into target orbit.

Previous launch attempts on Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled due to a failure in a pressurising system in an oxidiser tank and in the engine control system.

A Roscosmos broadcast showed the craft had reached an altitude of 268 kilometres (167 miles) in the 13 minutes after take-off, with Russia's space programme has been hit by a number of high-profile setbacks in recent years.

Last month Russia delayed the launch of a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), again at the last minute.

On that occasion, three astronauts from Russia, Belarus and the United States, were strapped in and ready for take-off when a "voltage dip" triggered an automatic shutdown seconds before blast-off.

Last year Russia's first mission to the moon in almost 50 years failed when a lander crashed into the lunar surface.

Reports have it that Russia's development of the Angara A-5, a heavy booster rocket designed to ferry tonnes of equipment into space, has also been beset by delays.