The official name of the Korona (Eng. Crown) project is Research, Development, and Production of Demonstrators with a Center-body Propulsion System, an AI-based Control and Monitor System of a Rocket and Space Complex with a Fully Reusable Launch Vehicle and a Universal Space Platform. Sixteen advanced liquid propellant rocket engines are going to be installed on a single-stage reusable launch vehicle. Currently, work on the rocket engine is being carried out at South Ural State University (SUSU). Also, the Korona project involves laboratories of micropowder technologies, impulse systems, and high-speed processes, as well as the Liquid Rocket Engine training and research laboratory complex where the engine and its parameters are being tested and optimized. As it is realizing the project, SUSU is successfully cooperating with several enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region, such as the Research Institute for Mechanical Engineering in Nizhnyaya Salda and NPO Automation. Additionally, cooperation is possible in the field of materials science, mathematical modeling, and energetics with Ural Federal University and institutes of the Ural Branch of the Academy of Sciences.
Unlike most multi-stage rockets in use today, the Korona will have many advantages.
‘Currently, spacecraft return to Earth in parts, and some don’t return at all,’ notes Sergey Vaulin. ‘Unlike them, our single-stage reusable rocket will return and still be complete. Also, due to the possibility of repeated use, the delivery of one kilogram of cargo to low Earth orbit will be much cheaper.’
In the global market, the Ural REC project will compete with solutions offered by SpaceX. In addition to its economic component, the project also has an environmental one: the engine will run on a fuel mixture of oxygen and hydrogen. It will be characterized both by high efficiency and non-toxicity of the mixture and its combustion products. At present, the engine model runs on a fuel consisting of liquid ethyl alcohol and gaseous oxygen. A demonstration launch of the multi-chamber propulsion system is to take place in September. As soon as next year, the developers intend to completely switch to an oxygen-hydrogen mixture. Such fuel will make it possible to launch a rocket to an altitude of up to 500 km, the upper limit in which a manned orbital station can operate.