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Third solid-fuel stage - Zefiro 9 Z9A SRM + IS23 Zefiro 9 is the engine adopted for the third stage of the Vega. Entirely designed and manufactured with Italian technologies developed at the Avio plant, it is 3.5 m tall and just under 2 m in diameter, it weighs 9 tons and burns 9 tons of solid fuel. Zefiro 9 will be fired when Vega reaches an altitude of 100 km, and it will take the launcher up to 150 km from the earth in just two minutes. In late October 2008, a bench test was successfully carried out on Zefiro 9A, an upgraded version of the engine powering the third stage of the launcher. This test, conducted at the Interforce Firing Range of Salto di Quirra in Sardinia, lasted 120 seconds and confirmed Zefiro 9A as the top-performing rocket engine in its class ever built in the world. |
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Length: 8.451 m Max diameter: 1.910 m Mass at Lift-off: 26 563 kg Burn time: 77.7 s Total Impulse: 67 126 KN s Structural Ratio: 7.50% |
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