Country of origin Ukraine Designer Yuzhnoye Design Bureau Application Upper Stage | First flight 2012-02-13 Manufacturer Yuzhmash Associated L/V Vega | |
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The RD-843 is a Ukrainian single nozzle liquid propellant rocket engine burning pressure-fed UDMH and nitrogen tetroxide. It is rated for up to 5 restarts, and can gimbal up to 10 degrees in each direction.
It was developed by Yuzhnoye Design Bureau for Avio and is manufactured by Yuzhmash. It uses the RD-869 thrust chamber, the old Soviet ICBM SS-18 Satan final stage engine from which it is evolved, and which was also designed by Yuzhnoye. The RD-843 ground test campaign included 74 tests, 140 ignitions, reaching a total of 8201 s, which is approximately 12 service lives on 4 engines. As of May 2015 it has been successfully used on four orbital launches.
It is currently used as the main engine of Vega's AVUM upper stage. Germany’s aerospace technology agency-DLR is understood to be keen to work with the Italians to develop a replacement for the RD-843.