A new joint venture has been set up to manufacture and market Russia's RD-180 and RD-120 rocket engines. The partners in the new company, known as RD AMROSS, are Pratt & Whitney (P&W) Space Propulsion of West Palm Beach, Florida, and Russia's NPO Energomash (NPO-EM), of Khimky, outside Moscow.
The venture brings together more than 70 years of combined experience in advanced space-propulsion systems and "solidifies" a relationship between the companies which began with talks in 1994, says Boris Katorgin, NPO-EM general director and designer.
The Russian company evolved from the Gas Dynamics Laboratory, established in 1929, which developed the first Soviet rockets. Although NPO-EM has produced engines for every former Soviet and Russian launch vehicle, the RD-180 and RD-120 now represent the bulk of its work.
Designed around a dual-thrust chamber, fuelled by liquid-oxygen/kerosene, about 80% of the parts of the RD-170 are used for the RD-180, along with new, smaller turbopumps. The engine produces 423,200kg (930,000lb) of vacuum thrust. The RD-170 formed part of the former Soviet Energia heavylift booster, and now powers the first stage of the Zenit satellite launcher.
The initial application of the RD-180 will be as the first-stage powerplant for the Lockheed-Martin/ILS International Launch Services Atlas 2AR satellite launcher, which will have its debut in December 1998. The shared technology and production capabilities of Lockheed Martin, NPO-EM and P&W allow ILS to reduce the number of engines on the Atlas from nine to two for the 2AR.
The 2AR can take a payload of 4,040kg into geostationary-transfer orbit (GTO), an increase of 370kg compared with the most powerful model available, the Atlas 2AS.
The Atlas 2AR's RD-180 prototype engines have already been tested in a series begun in Khimky in November 1996, with firings of 6s, up to the planned 186s burn-time duration. The test programme will include ten engines accumulating more than 5h of test time.
ILS says that the RD-180 is a "complete propulsion module", with hydraulics for control-valve actuation and thrust-vector gimballing, pneumatics for kerosene/oxygen supply-valve actuation and system purging, and a thrust frame to distribute loads - all self-contained as part of the engine.
Its single-stage main turbopump unit (MTU) turbine is powered by oxygen-rich gas generated in a pre-burner. This gas and additional kerosene are combusted into two identical main-chamber/nozzle assemblies.
Individual propellant-boost pumps feed the MTU, where both the single-stage high-pressure kerosene pumps are located on a common shaft. "The simplicity of the RD-180 control system, the benign start and shutdown processes and high margins in operating performance promise outstanding reliability for launch operations," according to ILS.
ILS' workhorses into the next century will be the Atlas 2AR and a proposed solid-propellant strap-on-booster version, the 2ARS, which will place 4,260kg into GTO. This new Atlas combination also forms the basis of Lockheed Martin's proposed design for the US Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) family.
Lockheed Martin is competing with McDonnell Douglas for the final $1.4 billion contract to build the EELV. There could be 200 EELV launches by 2020, so the RD-180 could be in for a lot of business with the Atlas and EELV projects alone.
For political reasons, the RD-180 would have to be produced solely in the USA if Lockheed Martin won the EELV contract. AMROSS says that the RD-180 is unlikely to boost a new Russian launcher, however, so it will be looking hard at other potential markets, for both the RD-180 and the RD-120.
The RD-120 is "a mature, high-performance, liquid-oxygen/kerosene propulsion system", says AMROSS. Since 1985, it has been used on the upper stage of the Zenit for 28 launches, 22 of which have been successful. One did not carry its payload into the correct orbit and there were five failures.
The engine, which produces a vacuum thrust of 85,000kg, was credited as the first flight-qualified Russian production rocket engine to be tested in the USA, in 1995 by P&W and NPO-EM. It is being marketed by AMROSS as the RD-120M for use in low-Earth-orbit launch vehicles. Modifications include a truncated nozzle and gimballing for the thrust-vector control system. It was originally chosen for the ill-fated Orbital Sciences/Rockwell partnership's X-34 re-usable launcher demonstration.
Source: Flight International
