The RD-0124 (, GRAU index: 14D23) is a rocket engine burning liquid oxygen and kerosene in an oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, developed by the Chemical Automatics Design Bureau in Voronezh. RD-0124 engines are used on the Block I stage used on Soyuz-2.1b and Soyuz-2.1v. A variant of the engine, the RD-0124A, is used on the Angara rocket family's URM-2 upper stage.
Design
RD-0124 engines use a multi-stage turbopump powered by pre-combustion of the engine propellants in the preburner. The kerosene fuel is used for regenerative cooling of the engine. Vehicle attitude control during ascent is provided by gimbaling the engine in two planes. The propellant tanks are helium-pressurized. Four combustion chambers are fed by a single turbopump system. The engine operates at a high chamber pressure and, for the type of propellants used, achieves a very high specific impulse of nearly 360 seconds in vacuum.
History
The inaugural flight of a launch vehicle using an RD-0124 engine took place on December 27, 2006, on the inaugural launch of the Soyuz-2.1b Orbital Sciences considered using the RD-0124 in the High Energy Second Stage (HESS) for their Antares