SAMARA, March 13 (AVN) - Specialists of the CSKB Progress state scientific and production space missile centre are looking into the details of implementation of the Aurora project, a spokesman for the centre's management told the Military News Agency on Tuesday.
The Avrora booster rocket project was developed by Samara space missile builders in conjunction with the Energia space missile corporation.
Currently, Progress is occupying a segment of the space services market. The Soyuz booster, which has been produced in Samara for more than 40 years now, is considered the world's most reliable and can take over 5t of payload into orbit. Nowadays, the enterprise controls about 30 percent of the world market of commercial space launches, successfully competing with American Delta and Atlas companies and other producers of similar boosters. At the same time, there is a growing demand for more powerful booster rockets.
Progress has all the necessary resources to quickly master the Aurora booster, which will help the enterprise enter the market of "heavy" launches, said the spokesman.
Aurora is planned to be equipped with the NK-33 engines that were developed yet for the Soviet moon exploration programme. The rocket will be placed in the hull that was built in Samara in late 1990s for the heavy-lift Energia booster which was supposed to launch the Buran space shuttle. Experts believe that Aurora will successfully compete with Russian Proton, Ukrainian Zenit, and European Arian.
The load carrying capacity of the new booster is 11 tonnes. If launched from equatorial cosmodromes, Aurora will leave all of its rivals far behind. The Progress spokesman said Russia could agree with a certain equatorial country on the construction of a cosmodrome in its territory.