Aerojet and its Russian partner United Engine Corporation (UEC) announced today the signing of a cooperation agreement regarding their next steps in the companies' cooperative efforts to provide NK-33 and AJ26 rocket engines to the commercial launch market. The cooperative efforts of Aerojet and UEC will include marketing, sales, technical support, testing and a range of activities for the eventual re-start of engine production - all designed to provide commercial customers with high-performing, cost-competitive NK-33 and AJ26 hydrocarbon engines. This agreement builds on more than 15 years of cooperation between Aerojet and JSC "N.D. Kuznetzov" (NDK), which is managed by UEC, to provide launch propulsion for the growing global commercial space market. Under the agreement, UEC will be responsible for marketing and sale of the modern NK-33 in the Russian Federation; checkout, testing and delivery of additional NK-33 rocket engines to Aerojet for modification into the AJ26; and eventual re-start of NK-33 production in Russia. UEC will also provide support of the NK-33 on vehicles launched from the Russian Federation. Aerojet, with an exclusive license for NK-33 and AJ26 in the U.S., is responsible for U.S. marketing and sale of the engines; modifying the NK-33 into the AJ26; and support of these engines on vehicles launched from the U.S. Aerojet will continue to evaluate U.S. production of the AJ26, based on market demand. Aerojet currently provides the AJ26 rocket engine for the first-stage of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Taurus II launcher. UEC provides the NK-33 to Russian Federation customers. Both Aerojet and UEC are offering AJ26 and modern NK-33 engines to additional customers in the United States and Russia, respectively. Aerojet, UEC and NDK recently completed a series of NK-33 rocket engine tests in Samara, Russia in support of Orbital's Taurus II launch vehicle development. This testing is built on the extensive engine database that includes more than 17 years of development testing as well as approximately 1,500 engine-level tests totaling 194,000 seconds of firing duration. The recent 'hot-fire' extended-time testing verified that the AJ26 has the significant engine performance margins and durability required for today's commercial launch vehicles. The AJ-26 engine is a modified Russian NK-33 providing 338,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. The NK-33 is a kerosene/liquid oxygen staged combustion rocket engine designed and built in the late 1960s by the Soviet Union's Kuznetsov Design Bureau. The NK-33 was intended for the ill-fated Soviet N-1 rocket moon shot. The staged combustion cycle, which is used in all Russian liquid fuel engines, provides high efficiency (high specific impulse, or Isp), but leads to combustion instability in larger configurations. As a result, the Russians never built large engines equivalent to the Saturn V's F-1, which provided 1.5 million pounds of thrust. The Russian RD-170, developed in the early 1980s, provides 1.7 million pounds of thrust but uses four combustion chambers to do so, making the RD-170 effectively four rocket engines sharing common turbo pumps. In the late 1960s, the Soviet solution to the combustion instability problem was to use a large number of smaller engines. The first state of the N-1 moon rocket was powered by thirty NK-33 engines arranged in two rings. Complex plumbing was needed to feed fuel and oxidizer into the clustered arrangement of rocket engines. This proved to be extremely fragile, and was a major factor in the design's launch failures. All four N-1 test launches ended in failure, each before first-stage separation. The longest flight lasted 107 seconds, just before 1st stage separation. Two test launches occurred in 1969, one in 1971 and the final one in 1972. The second flight, in 1969, resulted in the largest rocket explosion in history. At liftoff, a loose bolt was ingested into a fuel pump, which failed. After detecting the inoperative fuel pump, the automatic engine control shut off 29 of 30 engines, which caused the rocket to stall. The rocket exploded 23 seconds after shutting off the engines, destroying the rocket and launch tower. The explosion of 2,600 tons of fuel had the power of a small nuclear bomb. The destroyed complex was photographed by American satellites, disclosing that the Soviet Union was building a Moon rocket After the fourth failure in 1972, the remaining N-1 boosters were deliberately broken up in an effort to cover up the USSR's failed moon attempts. However, the NK-33 engines escaped destruction. Although the spacecraft as a whole was unreliable, the NK-33 engine is considered rugged and reliable when used as a standalone unit. The NK-33 engine achieves the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any Earth-launched rocket engine, while achieving a very high specific impulse. NK-33 is by many measures the highest performance LOX/Kerosene rocket engine ever created. About 150 engines survived, and in the mid-1990s, Russia sold 36 engines to Aerojet for $1.1 million each. Aerojet also acquired a license for the production of new engines. Supplied through Aerojet, three of the NK-33 engines were incorporated into Japanese rockets J-1 and J-2. The US company Kistler Aerospace (later Rocketplane Kistler) worked on incorporating these engines into a new rocket design before declaring bankruptcy. The current design of Orbital Science's Taurus II launch vehicle includes two NK-33s as the first stage engines. The Aerojet AJ26 implements several modifications to the NK-33. Most of these modifications are specific to the Taurus II. However, an industry source quoted by Space News said that Russia is interested in a new gimbal and a number of modern actuators that Aerojet designed for its Americanized NK-33. United Engine Corporation, a subsidiary of Oboronprom, is the leading Russian industrial group producing engines for aircraft, aerospace industry, gas compression stations and power plants. Oboronprom, a Russian Technologies State Corporation company, is a diversified group in the engineering and high technologies sectors. Oboronprom's helicopter manufacturing group, Russian Helicopters, is the leading Russian designer and manufacturer of rotary-wing aircraft equipment. Oboronprom's United Engine Corporation consolidates over 80 percent of the country's aircraft engine making assets. -- April 27, 2010 In other news...