Dnepr Rocket
Yuzhnoye Design Bureau (KB Pivdenne)
Commercial satellite launch vehicle converted from the retired R-36M (SS-18 'Satan') ICBM, designed by Yuzhnoye.
Technical specifications
- Height
- 34.3 m
- Diameter
- 3 m
- Liftoff mass
- 211,000 kg
- Payload to LEO
- 4,500 kg
- Payload to SSO
- 2,300 kg
- Stages
- 3
- First flight
- 21 April 1999
- Total launches
- 22 (21 successful)
- Status
- Retired (program ended March 2015)
About
The Dnepr rocket was a three-stage commercial launch vehicle derived from the R-36M intercontinental ballistic missile, a Cold War-era weapon system originally designed by Yuzhnoye and known in the West by its NATO reporting name SS-18 ‘Satan’. Converted for peaceful commercial use, Dnepr used storable hypergolic propellants and launched from silos at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and Dombarovsky in Russia. Dnepr conducted its first commercial flight on 21 April 1999 and went on to complete 22 missions, 21 of them successful, before the program ended in March 2015 following the breakdown of the joint Russian-Ukrainian launch arrangement amid rising geopolitical tensions between the two countries. Over its operational life, Dnepr provided a low-cost route to orbit for a wide range of government and commercial small-to-medium satellites, cementing Yuzhnoye’s role as designer of one of the most cost-effective ICBM-derived launch systems of its era.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.
