Russia’s Soyuz 2-1b launch vehicle should make its maiden flight by the end of the year, provided the delayed second flight of the Soyuz 2-1a, the first with the enlarged ST payload fairing, is successful. The Samara Space Centre-built Soyuz 2-1b, using the new RD-0124 third-stage engine, was originally to be launched in September from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
The first Soyuz 2-1b will use the larger 4.11m (13.4ft)-diameter, 11.4m-long ST fairing to carry French space agency CNES’s Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits spacecraft. But a CNES official says the 2-1b maiden flight has been delayed because the ST fairing must first fly on the Soyuz 2-1a. As well as the ST fairing, the 2-1a has new digital controls.
The 2-1a was to make its second flight in July, but ground segment problems delayed the launch to 7 October. Then, last week, the launcher’s upper stage, comprising Eumetsat’s MetOp-A polar-orbiting meteorological satellite payload, Fregat fourth stage and ST fairing was accidentally dropped, delaying it further.
Jean-Marc Astorg, a CNES launcher directorate official working on the European Space Agency’s Soyuz in French Guiana project, denies reports the 2-1b delay is due to problems with the RD-0124 engine. “The RD-0124 has been qualified. The first campaign of staging tests has been completed and the second campaign is under way,” he says.
Source: Flight International
