Ukraine ready to deliver new shipment of rocket engines to its European partners
The State-owned enterprise, Makarov Pivdenny Machine Building Plant, is preparing to send the next batch of rocket engines to European partners as part of the Vega project.
According to the enterprise’s press service, in the second quarter of this year the plant has manufactured and is ready to ship two RD-843 liquid rocket engines to the customer.
CR Vega was developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in cooperation with the Italian Space Agency (ASI). It is designed to launch satellites to a sun-synchronous orbit, at a height of 1,200 km, weighing up to 1,200 kg or to a polar orbit for satellites with a height of 700 km, weighing 1,500 kg.
The contract for the development, testing, and delivery of the fourth-stage engine for the RC Vega between SDO Pivdenne, SE Pivdenmash (both located in Dnipro) and Italian Avio SpA was signed in February 2004. According to the developer, the new liquid engine for the European RC is based on the RS-20 intercontinental ballistic missile carrier (ICBM) (NATO classification SS -18 Satan).
In April 2012 the partners signed a three-year contract (extendable if needed) with AvioSpA for the first serial engines delivery. In July 2017 the parties extended the contract until 2020.
Launches of the CR Vega are conducted from the European Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. The successful test launch of the CR Vega was completed in February 2012. As of May 2013 ESA started the commercial operation of the new carrier rocket.
So far 10 launches have been carried out under the Vega program, two of which took place in 2017. In March CR Vega launched the Sentinel-2B satellite for the European Earth remote sensing system, Copernicus. In addition, in August, the French-Israeli satellite, Venus – a part of the Copernicus system, and the Italian reconnaissance satellite, OPTSAT-3000 were launched.
The Government of Ukraine and ESA signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of space exploration for peaceful purposes in 2008. The ESA consists of 17 European countries.