RD-263
rocket engine
The RD-263 (Russian: Ракетный Двигатель-263, romanized: Raketnyy Dvigatel-263, lit. 'Rocket Engine 263', GRAU index: 15D117) is a liquid-fuel rocket engine, burning a hypergolic mixture of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) fuel with dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) oxidizer in the oxidizer rich staged combustion cycle. Four RD-263 engines form a propulsion module RD-264 (GRAU index: 15D119). For the R-36M KB Yuzhnoye only ordered the first stage propulsion to Energomash, instead of both stages, arguing that they were overworked with the RD-270 development. By April 1970 Yuzhnoye was getting the engine documentation. By the end of 1972 Energomash started to test fire the engines in its own test stand. And by September 1973 the engine was certified for flight. While the engine is out of production, the ICBM as well as the Dnepr remain operational as of 2015.
Versions
The basic engine has been used for the
RD-263 (GRAU index: 15D117): Initial version used on the R-36M and R-36MUTTKh first stage (15А14 and 15A18).
RD-268 (GRAU index: 15D168): Variation used on the MR-UR-100 (15А15) and MR-UR-100UTTKh (15A16) first stage.
RD-273 (AKA RD-263F): Improved version based on the RD-263F upgrade project.
The public source identifies “RD-263” as rocket engine. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around RD-263, rocket and engine.
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This entry incorporates text from “RD-263” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.