KYIV. May 28 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Pivdenne Design Bureau (Dnipropetrovsk) is working on plans to modernize the Zenit launch vehicle, and the modernization will be conducted on the basis of technical solutions of Ukrainian medium launch vehicle of the Mayak family.
Director General and Chief Designer of Pivdenne Design Bureau Oleksandr Dehtiariov said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine that the modernization of the Zenit launch vehicle is aimed at considerably cheapening the launch vehicle previously made in cooperation with Russia and increasing its market potential.
“The difficulties that we have with the exploitation of Zenit today are first linked to the fact that due to various negative factors, Zenit became expensive in production. It became more expensive than Proton [Russia’s heavy launch vehicle],” he said.
Dehtiariov said there are plans to modernize the Zenit launch vehicle on the basis of technical solutions of the new Ukrainian medium launch vehicle of the Mayak family: forming and expensive waffle structures will be removed from production.
“The upgraded Zenit will have Ukrainian engines, not Russian ones: first stage – RD-815 and second stage – RD-801. We also plan to replace the engine of the third stage, Pivdenne Design Bureau has large potential in this direction,” he said.
He said that until recently Zenit was used first in international projects to launch commercial satellites from the Sea Launch and Baikonur space centers and as part of the Federal Space Program of Russia.
He said the current portfolio of orders of the bureau includes orders for launches from Baikonur: one launch for autumn 2015 and one for 2016. This year it is planned to launch a Ukrainian satellite from Baikonur.
Commenting on Sea Launch, Dehtiariov said that unfortunately, Energia rocket and space corporation which became almost a 100% owners of Sea Launch after the restructuring of the consortium, failed to cope with this. Competitiveness was lost (on the global launch service market).
