The SES-20 and SES-21 devices are designed to provide a television signal in the USANEW YORK, October 5.
/tass/. The American company United Launch Alliance (ULA) has launched an Atlas V launch vehicle equipped with a Russian RD-180 engine. It will deliver two satellites of the Luxembourg company SES into orbit.
The launch of the launch vehicle was carried out on Tuesday from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome (Florida) at 17:36 local time (00:36 Moscow time on October 5). Atlas V will put the SES-20 and SES-21 devices, designed to provide a television signal in the United States, into geosynchronous orbit.
The Atlas V rocket belongs to the Atlas family of American space carriers, created on the basis of the intercontinental ballistic missile of the same name (it was in service with the United States until 1965). It was developed by Lockheed Martin Corporation in the late 1990s by order of the US Department of Defense as part of the EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle - "Advanced Disposable Launch Vehicle") program. The first stage of the launch vehicle is equipped with a Russian RD-180 oxygen-kerosene engine developed by NPO Energomash (part of Roscosmos).
In connection with the sanctions policy of the West, which followed in response to Russia's special military operation in Ukraine and affected many Russian enterprises of the rocket and space industry, Roscosmos reported that a decision had been made to stop the maintenance of unused products left by the American side (at that time, ULA had 24 RD-180 engines at its disposal).
