Blok D (russian: Блок Д meaning Block D) is an
upper stage used on
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
and later
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n
expendable launch system
An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are either destroyed during reentry or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of several rocket sta ...
s, including the
N1,
Proton-K and
Zenit
Zenit, meaning "zenith", may refer to:
Spaceflight and rocketry
* Zenit (rocket family), a Soviet family of space launch vehicles
* Zenit (satellite), a type of Soviet spy satellite
* Zenit sounding rocket, a Swiss rocket
Sports
* Zenit (sports ...
.
[
The stage (and its derivatives) has been included in more than 320 launched rockets .][ By 2002 its modification Blok DM had a 97% success rate in 218 flights since 1974, and 43 successful missions in 1997–2002.][
The stage was developed in 1960s as the fifth stage (' Д' is the fifth letter in the Cyrillic alphabet) for the Soviet Moonshot N1 rocket. The stage first flew in March 1967 while testing Zond of the moonshot program system. During manned lunar flight Blok D would be used for mid-course corrections on the flight to the Moon, then to place the lunar orbiter and lander into a lunar orbit, and decelerate moon-lander out onto its landing trajectory.][
Blok D was also included as fourth stage of Proton-K and as such flew on unmanned Soviet missions to Moon, ]Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
( Mars 3) and Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...
. It was used in the Proton-K configuration of the rocket and is still in use in the newer Proton-M variant (along with the Briz-M).
Blok DM also flies as the third stage for the Zenit-3SL rocket, which is used by the Sea Launch project to launch geostationary satellites. In 2002 a Blok DM3 failed in the attempted launch of Astra 1K.
The stage uses liquid oxygen
Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an applica ...
(LOX) and kerosene
Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning "wax", and was regi ...
as propellants, and has one single-chamber RD-58 main engine. The LOX tank has a spherical shape; the kerosene tank is toroidal, inclined to 15 degrees for better fuel extraction, with the engine mounted in the center of torus. Tanks include the first pump stage for the engine; the main pump is mounted on the engine.
Blok D weighs 3.5 tons during liftoff, but some parts are jettisoned and the dry mass in space is 2.5 tons. It has 5.70 meters length and generates 83.300 kN thrust for 600 seconds burn time. Blok D was modified as Blok DM in 1974, with 11D-58S engine. The unit cost is $4 million.Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant
JSC Krasmash (stylized KrasMash), the Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant (russian: Красноярский машиностроительный завод) is a company based in Krasnoyarsk, Russia and established in 1932. It is currently a Roscos ...
.[
]
Modifications
RKK Energia, the company that created Blok D, used it as a platform for many modifications over many years for different purposes; for example, the main propulsion unit on Buran started as a modification of the Blok D.[
]
Variants
See also
* Blok DM-03 – Advanced version of this stage.
* N-1 N1, N.I, N-1, or N01 may refer to:
Information technology
* Nokia N1, an Android tablet
* Nexus One, an Android phone made by HTC
* Nylas N1, a desktop email client
* Oppo N1, an Android phone
* N1, a Sun Microsystems software brand now mostly ...
– original launch vehicle for which this stage was developed.
* Proton
A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...
– launch vehicle that has flown the most with this stage.
* Zenit-3
Zenit ( uk, Зеніт, russian: Зени́т; meaning ''Zenith'') is a family of space launch vehicles designed by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Dnipro, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Zenit was originally built in the 1980s ...
– launch vehicle that uses this stage.
* Angara A5
The Angara rocket family (Russian: Ангара) is a family of launch vehicles being developed by the Moscow-based Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The launch vehicles are to put between and into low Earth orbit and ar ...
– launch vehicle that will use this stage when launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome
References
External links
Russian Space Web
* https://web.archive.org/web/20120716190506/http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/jgreen/blockd.html
{{N1-L3
Soviet inventions
Rocket stages
Rocket engines using kerosene propellant