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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sawtooth who wrote (4760)	10/23/1998 7:40:00 AM
From: Jeff Vayda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

All: Loral's Telstar VII to be delayed due to the Russians (those pesky Russians again!) 3 10/23/1998 Article:117416 RD-180 test troubles push back first Atlas III launch Engine-testing troubles on the Russian-built RD-180 that will power Lockheed Martin's new Atlas III space launch vehicle have forced a delay in its inaugural flight from March until the second quarter of 1999. A spokesman for Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver said yesterday engineers understand what caused RD-180 test anomalies in both Russia and the U.S. over the past two months and are working to deliver the first flight RD-180 engine in December. That delivery was originally scheduled last month, so the first flight will slip accordingly, he said. The first Atlas III is scheduled to carry Loral's Telstar VII telecommunications satellite to orbit. Testing on an RD-180 in the Atlas III configuration is scheduled to resume at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on Nov. 4 with a 56-second burn that will throttle the big Russian engine from 70% up to 90% thrust and back to 70%, exercising its gimballing mechanism at the same time. That test was tried on Oct. 14, but the engine shut down after only 2.7 seconds, the spokesman said. The shutdown was later traced to a ground computer, and was "not an engine-related problem," the spokesman said. An engine test in Khimki, Russia, on Aug. 27 was truncated when a part "fractured" during the burn, the spokesman said. The mishap delayed the second test at Marshall, but engineers have determined its cause and corrected it, according to the Lockheed Martin spokesman. Overall, the RD-180 has logged more than 10,000 seconds of hot-fire testing at the NPO Energomash facility in Khimki, and has passed an initial 10-second configuration test at Marshall (DAILY, July 31). The engine is a two-bell version of the four-bell RD-170 Energomash developed for the late- Soviet era Energia rocket, generating 860,000 lbst, that Lockheed Martin also plans to use on its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). Copyright 1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.