“Energomash and the US company RD Amross have concluded an additional agreement and contract on the delivery of engines in December of this year. Energomash will deliver another 20 RD-180 engines to the United States by 2019 inclusively for use in Atlas’s first-stage rocket carriers,” Energomash said in a statement.
In 2014, the US Congress passed a law requiring the United States to develop a domestically produced next-generation rocket propulsion system by 2019 in order to eliminate reliance on the Russian RD-180 rocket engines.
The US Congress has allotted $220 million on the development of its own new engines.
On Friday, the Congress passed an all-encompassing 2,200-page budget that includes a provision allowing the United States to continue purchasing the Russian RD-180 rocket engines, which it uses for national defense and other space launches.
