The Proton-PM company (part of NPO Energomash integrated structure of Roscosmos) has started to master production of the RD-191M engine, a modified version of the RD-191 for Angara launch vehicles. The first unit is to be manufactured in the beginning of 2023, the same year NPO Energomash will start testing it.

The RD191M is a modification of the RD-191 engine boosted by 10%. The engine will perform the assigned tasks during launches of heavy versions of Angara rockets from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, including crewed program. To do so, the developers have introduced a number of changes to the product.

‘When creating the RD-191M, the design and technological groundwork for the RD-191, RD-171M, RD-180 and RD-181 engines is used to the maximum, significantly reducing development costs,’ says Pyotr Lyovochkin, NPO Energomash Chief Designer. ‘In 2021, we will fully release the engine design documentation and hand it over to the manufacturer.’

Under the agreement signed in December 2020, Proton-PM will manufacture three RD-191M engine prototypes. The first one is intended for development tests, the second for final development tests, and the third for interagency tests.

‘For the first time since the beginning of the development of the RD-191 engine at Proton-PM, a contract was signed not for individual components, but for the product as a whole, which greatly facilitates the development process,’ the engine project manager Igor Timshin adds. ‘It is also important to take into account that the units and assemblies assigned to the enterprise make up about 40% of the RD-191 production labor intensity, and the RD-191M engine has a high degree of continuity with the prototype.’

To master the production of RD-191M, over 1,200 new technical processes and 3,500 tooling designs will be necessary to release. In addition, in 2020–2022, six existing testbeds will be modernized, five more to be designed and manufactured. The RD-191M engine assembly site is to be organized in the first quarter of 2022. It will be located at a suburban production site in the new building 82.