KB Pivdenne

KB Pivdenne, the Pivdenne Design Office, is a state design bureau in Dnipro, Ukraine, named after its founder Mikhail Yangel. It designs satellites and launch rockets and was formerly a designer of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, under the Soviet designation OKB-586. It works closely with the Pivdenmash machine-building plant, also in Dnipro, which builds the models the bureau develops. Its directors have been Mikhail Yangel from 1954, Vladimir Utkin from 1971, Stanislav Konyukhov from 1991 and Oleksandr Dehtiariov from 2010. Current products include the Zenit rocket family, the Dnepr launcher converted from the R-36 missile, the first stage core of the Antares rocket and a range of rocket engines and thrusters, while retired products include the Tsyklon rockets and the R-12, R-14, R-16 and R-36 missiles.