Current and Proposed Uses
The Orbital Sciences Antares light-to-medium-lift launcher, has two modified NK-33 in its first stage, a solid second stage and a hypergolic orbit stage. The NK-33s are first imported from Russia to the United States and then modified into Aerojet AJ26s, which involves removing some harnessing, adding U.S. electronics, qualifying it for U.S. propellants, and modifying the steering system.
RSC Energia is proposing an 'Aurora-L.SK' launch vehicle which would use an NK-33 to power the first stage and a Block DM-SL for the second stage. TsSKB-Progress also plans to use NK-33 as the main engine of the lightweight version of the successful Soyuz rocket family under development, called Soyuz-1. The NK-33A intended for the Soyuz-1 was successfully hot-fired on January 15, 2013, following a series of cold-fire and systems tests of the fully assembled Soyuz-1 in 2011-2012.
On June 17, 2011, Aerojet announced a strategic partnership with Teledyne Brown which would begin producing a US built version of the AJ-26, with its thrust increased to 500,000 lbf at sea level and will be produced at Teledyne's factory in Huntsville, Alabama. Their hope is to utilize this new, upgraded AJ-26 for the next generation Space Launch System.
Read more about this topic: NK-33
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