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Above: General architecture of the Navigator platform. Credit: NPO Lavochkin |
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The Navigator satellite bus At the turn of the 21st century, NPO Lavochkin, a key Russian satellite developer, proposed a standard satellite bus which could serve as the basis for a wide range of missions. It would feature systems designed to work in the vacuum of space and therefore would not need pressurized compartments, which were often prone to failure. The platform would also be able to maintain attitude control in space along all three axis with higher accuracy than previous-generation spacecraft available for Russian scientific and application missions. Dubbed Navigator, the vehicle was adopted for the Elektro-L and Elektro-M meteorological satellites, as well as for the Spektr-R (Radioastron), Spektr-RG (Rentgen), Spektr-UF, Gamma-400, Spektr-M (Millimetron) space observatories and the Arktika remote-sensing and communications satellites. As of 2008, Spektr-R and Gamma-400 missions were expected to use a basic Navigator platform, Spektr-RG and Spektr-UV telescopes would need some adaptation in case of their launch into the L2 libration points. As of 2010, NPO Lavochkin was apparently bidding the Navigator platform in government tenders as a base for Arkon-2 and Astrometria missions. (434) According to NPO Lavochkin, the Navigator platform was designed to work on geostationary, Sun-sunchronous, highly elliptical Earth orbits and even near the so-called Libration points, essentially in deep space. The satellite based on that platform could be integrated with Soyuz, Zenit or Proton launchers. An onboard flight control complex, BKU, of the Navigator platform was developed by MOKB Mars. The Navigator platform was known to include following key systems:
The propulsion system of the standard Navigator platform included four orbit-correction engines with the thrust of 5 Newtons and eight attitude-control thrusters with the thrust of 0.5 Newtons. Known specifications of Navigator platform (410):
*according to "Astrofizecheskiy proejkt Spektr-Rentgen-Gamma, FKP-2015 RF," October 2006
Page author: Anatoly Zak; Last update: November 29, 2012 Page editor: Alain Chabot; Last edit: January 22, 2011 All rights reserved |
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The hexagon-shaped Navigator spacecraft bus was expected to serve as the base for a number of Russian science and application missions, such as Elektro-L and Spektr-RG. Credit: IKI
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