Harman Patil (Editor)

RD 861

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Country of origin
  
Ukraine

Designer
  
Yuzhnoye Design Bureau

Application
  
Upper Stage

First flight
  
October 27, 1967

Manufacturer
  
Yuzhmash

Associated L/V
  
Tsyklon-3

RD-861

The RD-861 is a Soviet liquid propellant rocket engine burning UDMH and nitrogen tetroxide in a gas generator combustion cycle. It has a main combustion chamber, with four vernier nozzles fed by the gas generator output. It can be reignited a single time.

Contents

History

When the Soviet military developed the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, Yangel's OKB-586 proposed a new version of their R-36 ICBM, called the R-36-ORB (GRAU Index: 8K69). It incorporated an orbital warhead called OGCh (GRAU Index: 8F021), for which the RD-854 engine was developed in-house. Since the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 banned nuclear weapons in Earth orbit, but did not ban the launch systems, the Soviet Union proceeded to test their FOBS albeit without placing nuclear warheads in orbit.

Versions

There are three versions of this engine:

  • RD-854 (GRAU Index: 8D612): First developed as the third stage engine for the R-36ORB FOBS.
  • RD-861 (GRAU Index: 11D25): Also known as the S5.23 or D-25. It was the engine of the Tsyklon-3 third stage.
  • RD-861K : An improved RD-861, developed for the third stage of the Tsyklon-4. The vernier nozzles were replaced with an hydraulic actuated gimbal for the whole engine. The isp was increased, the burn time tripled and the reignitions increased to three.

    • References

    RD-861 Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA