William Ho

ARO 102L-04
" ARO 102L Homework # 1a Essay
Proton- The Russian Super ICBM
1.0 Introduction
During my search for a launch vehicle to write about, I began to find an interest in
Russian made vehicles. The massive scale that the Russians usually create makes
their vehicles so much more interesting to read about. So naturally, I wanted to
find the biggest they had.

The reason the Russians wanted a over-sized ICBM in order to launch a 100megaton warhead over a distance of 13,000km was because they wanted a rocket
capable of sending the largest warhead the Russians had.

The Proton originally was intended to be a super sized intercontinental ballistic

missile but the Russian leaders decided it served a better purpose by sending
space probes and other spacecraft to outer space. The Proton was a major part of
the space race in the middle of the 1960's. The largest of the rockets was supposed
to land cosmonauts on the Moon using the launch vehicle to send the Zond craft
to the Moon until 1970. Since then, the Proton sends up key segments of the Mir,
Salyut, and ISS as well as space probes to Venus, Mars and Halley's Comet
helping Russia contribute to the science community. Overall, the entire program
cost 85 million dollars.

2.0 Mission
The Proton launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. A transport carrier brings
the rocket horizontally and on the launch pad, it is raised vertical. After it lifts off it
releases a spacecraft into geostationary orbit with an apogee of 22,236 miles and
perigee 3,888 miles above Earth. Currently, the launch vehicle is capable to lifting

William Ho
ARO 102L-04
33.2 tonnes into geostationary orbit which is the most typical type of orbit for
satellites. In total, it takes 4 stages to send an object into geostationary orbit. The first
flight of the launch vehicle was on July 16, 1965 at 11:16AM with Proton 1 as the
payload. The mission was to send the N-4 satellite into orbit and was able to study
super-high energy cosmic particles. The launch was successful and has to this day
with a 95% success rate.
3.0 Space Craft design
On the launch pad, the launch vehicle weighs about 1,550,000 lb.. Using hypergolic
propellants, the proton uses UDMH and N204 to create a thrust for the first 3 stages
of the rocket The fourth stage uses liquid oxygen and refined kerosene. The first stage
uses 6 engines as seen in Figure 3.0-1, the second uses 4 engines, and third uses 2
engines. Together, the engines create enough thrust to send the payload into low earth
orbit as seen in Table 3.0-1.

Figure 3.0-1 Proton Launch Vehicle going to launch pad.

William Ho
ARO 102L-04

Table 3.0-1 Proton Launch Vehicle Engine Specifications

Rocket Stages

Propellant

Thrust (Pounds)

N2O4/UDMH

1,986,000

N2O4/UDMH

540,000

N2O4/UDMH

142,000

LO2/kerosene

19,100

4.0 Spacecraft and Mission Anomalies

On August 18, 2011, the Proton lifted Ekspress-AM4, one of the Ekspress (Express)
satellites owned by the Russian State Company for Satellite Communications which
is used for communication. Everything was performing perfectly but upon separating
with the fourth stage, the spacecraft lost communication with ground control. The
report after the accident stated that during the flight program for the upper stage, the
engineers did not give enough time for the gyroscopic stabilization platform to finish
working. Therefore the final stage did not have the correct altitude when it released
the payload. The agency promised to fix the problem in order to send a replacement
satellite.
5.0 Conclusions
This launch vehicle is a major accomplishment for the Soviet Union and Russia
because they had finally built a lasting profitable rocket. In the long run, the rocket
had created a industry buy giving paying customers a way to send their satellites into
orbit and therefore improving Russia's economy.