FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1968
1968 - 0034.PDF
36 FLIGHT International, 4 January |j Proton I space booster (see "Powering Soviet Rockets," below), dis- played last year at the Russian Exhibition of Economic Achievement in Moscow, and . . . Spaceflight POWERING SOVIET ROCKETS Some characteristics of Russian space rocket engines have been described in a recent article in the Soviet Air Force magazine Aviatsiya i Kosmonautica Aviation and Cosmonautics), pub- licised by the Novosti Information Service. The article refers to the Proton, RD-119 and RD-107 series of engines. It refers to the Proton system as "an outstanding achieve- ment of rocket and engine building" and as having "powerful small-size engines with exceptionally high power character- istics." Three Proton spacecraft have been launched, the first in 1965, and in each case the payload has been 12 tons or more. Lifting capacity of the carrier rocket in this system is several times greater than that of the Vostok launcher which put Yuri Gagarin's spacecraft into orbit in 1961, and aggregate maximum thrust of the engines is three times as great. RD-119 engines are used to launch Cosmos satellites, 198 of which have been put into orbit since March 1962. These sput- niks [the term Cosmos is used comprehensively, to describe any- thing from a meteorological satellite (to an orbital weapon system] are orbited by two-, three- and four-stage carrier rockets of several types, with lifting capacity ranging from hundreds of pounds to 1\ tons. The first of the series, a two-stage rocket Cosmos, has been successfully flying since March 16, 1962. A liquid-fuel engine with a thrust of 11 tons was installed as the rocket's second stage, and this is said to be "highly economical—a character- istic in which it is unequalled by any liquid-fuel rocket engines of the oxygen type. Its fuel includes liquid oxygen (oxydiser) and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (fuel)." The RD-107 engine of the Vostok launcher was developed in the 1954-57 period at the GDL (Gas Dynamic Laboratory) in Leningrad and is described as "the world's first serial engine using a fuel with high content of calories—liquid oxygen and a hydrocarbon fuel." RD-107 engines and their developments have been used for ten years as propellants for the first stage in a number of carrier rockets, launching Sun and Moon satellites, Moon, Venus and Mars probes and the manned Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft. The article says of them: "These engines are of exceptionally high reliability and much superior, as regards their main characteristic, specific thrust, to rocket engines with the same kind of fuel elsewhere in the world." ITALIAN-US LAUNCH AGREEMENT Italy and the United States are to co-operate in a third com bined space project with the launching of a scientific satellj; into equatorial orbit from an ocean platform off the coast 0 Kenya to carry out upper atmosphere experiments during 1969-70 period. This new project, San Marco C, follows the successfi launching of San Marco 2 on April 26, 1967, from the sam San Marco equatorial range. The Italian National Spac Commission (CRS) was responsible for development of th range as well as for design and construction of the satellitj The launching vehicle was a Scout rocket provided by N/ The launch site is the only one capable of putting Scoi payloads into equatorial orbit, which is advantageous fo measuring a variety of atmospheric characteristics: it provide useful data on the density, composition, temperatu and structural behaviour of the atmosphere above 120 mile as affected by solar and geomagnetic activity and twice-i variations of the atmosphere. San Marco 1 was successfully launched from NASA Wallops station, Va, using a NASA Scout vehicle. San Marco I will permit comparison and correlation of the direct measun ment of density and molecular temperature with the dire detection of the atmospheric particles and their atomic weigl or composition and independent measurement of atmospheri temperature. In addition to the Italian experiment, the scientific payloa will include two mass spectrometer experiments prepared fc NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in co-operation wii the University of Michigan. Under a memorandum of understanding between CRS an NASA, Italy undertakes to design, manufacture and test it satellite, provide range facilities, conduct the launchini acquire data from experiments and join with NASA analysing final results. NASA agrees to provide the mas spectrometer experiments, Scout launching vehicle, trainin of Italian personnel as necessary, tracking and data acquisitio services and analysis of the spectrometer data. MARINER 4 INCOMMUNICADO Communications with Mariner 4, the unmanned interplanetai spacecraft launched from Cape Kennedy on November 2 1964, were terminated for ever on Wednesday, December 2 This was announced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cat fornia Institute of Technology, on December 23. JPL is prin contractor for the Mariner programme, the object of which scientific exploration in the vicinity of Mars and Venus. Mariner 4 took the world's only close-up photographs i Mars in 1965, when it passed within 6,118 miles of the plan on July 14. At the time communications with it were termi Vostok booster at the 1967 USSR space Exhibition in Budapt
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
