Lavochkin

Lavochkin Association
State-owned company
Industry Aerospace and defense
Founded 1937
Headquarters Khimki, Moscow region, Russian Federation
Key people
  • Sergei Lemeshevskii (Acting Director General)
  • Semyon Lavochkin (Chief Designer from 1940 to 1960)
Products Spacecraft
Number of employees
 5000
Website http://www.laspace.ru

NPO Lavochkin (OKB-301, also called Lavochkin Research and Production Association or shortly Lavochkin Association, LA) is a Russian aerospace company. It is a major player in the Russian space program, being the developer and manufacturer of the Fregat upper stage, as well as interplanetary probes such as Fobos-Grunt. Currently it is headed by Sergei Lemeshevskii.[1]

Overview

The company develops and manufactures spacecraft such as the Fregat rocket upper stages, satellites and interplanetary probes. It is a contractor for a number of military programs, such as the Oko early warning satellite, Prognoz and Araks programmes as well as the civilian program Kupon. One of the company's most notable projects was the participation in the failed Fobos-Grunt sample return mission.[2] NPO Lavochkin has also developed the Elektro–L series of new-generation weather satellites, as well as the Navigator standardised satellite platform, which will serve as the basis for several future Russian satellites.[3]

History

The company was founded in 1937 as OKB-301, a Soviet aircraft design bureau (OKB). The head designer was Vladimir P. Gorbunov. On October, 1945 Semyon Lavochkin was promoted for the head designer of the design bureau. It gained distinction for its family of piston-engined fighter aircraft during World War II, and later shifted to missile and jet fighter designs. Following the death of the head designer, the OKB-301 succumbed to the growing power of Vladimir Chelomey and became OKB-52 Branch No. 3 on 18 December 1962.[4]:300 Later, it turned to work on interplanetary probe designs for Luna sample return program, the Lunokhod program, Vega program, Phobos program, etc. The former OKB-301 became named NPO Lavochkin.

In January 2012, officials of Lavochkin faced administrative punishment for not taking into account of designing the computer system after the crash of Russia's Mars moon spacecraft Fobos-Grunt.[5]

Projects

Aircraft

Rockets and missiles

Spacecraft

Future projects

Designers and engineers

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lavochkin.
  1. ↑ "Acting Director General of NPO Lavochkin appointed Sergei Lemeshev". News in Russian. 2015-08-07. Retrieved 2016-01-12.
  2. ↑ Harvey, Brian (2007). "The design bureaus". The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program (1st ed.). Germany: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-71354-0.
  3. ↑ "Russia meteo satellite Electro-L successfully orbited". ITAR-TASS. 2011-01-21.
  4. ↑ Siddiqi, Asif A. Challenge To Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, part I. NASA.
  5. ↑ "Phobos-Grunt chips supposedly were counterfeit". ITAR-TASS. 31 January 2012. Retrieved 7 May 2012.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, March 25, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.