OREANDA-NEWS. Aerojet Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AJRD), and Space Systems Loral (SSL), a leading provider of commercial satellites, recently celebrated three key centennial milestones for the companies. This past year, SSL launched its 100th satellite built on the SSL 1300 platform; Aerojet Rocketdyne delivered 100 bipropellant apogee thrusters for those 100 SSL 1300 satellites; and coincidently, the 100th SSL 1300 also used Aerojet Rocketdyne's 100th High-Performance Apogee Thruster (HiPAT™).

The SSL 1300 was originally introduced in the 1980s and at that time used the Aerojet Rocketdyne R-4D-11 bipropellant apogee thruster, which was specifically developed and qualified for the SSL 1300. SSL has continually evolved the 1300 platform over the years to provide higher power, increased payloads, longer life and greater flexibility. As part of this evolution in capability, the HiPAT™ was first introduced into the SSL 1300 platform in 2002. The HiPAT™ is used on four different GEO Comsat platforms, and provides the highest performance of any bipropellant apogee thruster in the world.

"On behalf of all the women and men here at Aerojet Rocketdyne who contributed over the years, I would like to express our joy to have this opportunity to celebrate this triple centennial event with SSL, and express our pride in our continued achievement of 100 percent mission success with our valued customer partners," said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake.

"SSL and Aerojet Rocketdyne have had a very productive and successful relationship over the past 30 years, and Aerojet Rocketdyne's apogee engines have been an important contributor to the success of the SSL 1300 platform," said Paul Estey, executive vice president of SSL.

Aerojet Rocketdyne is an innovative company delivering solutions that create value for its customers in the aerospace and defense markets. The company is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader that provides propulsion and energetics to the space, missile defense and strategic systems, tactical systems and armaments areas, in support of domestic and international markets.