NASA gave ATK Launch Systems [ATK] an $812.5 million contract change to continue delivering reusable solid rocket motors for the space shuttle, NASA said Friday.
That means the Brigham City, Utah, company will provide enough solid rocket motors to serve all of the space shuttle launches scheduled until the shuttle fleet is mandated to retire Sept. 30, 2010.
After that, the United States won’t have a manned vehicle space program for half a decade, until the next-generation U.S. spaceship Orion, an Apollo-style space capsule, and the Ares rocket begin manned flights in 2015.
ATK will produce and refurbish flight and ground-test reusable solid rocket motors for the space shuttle program on this cost-plus-award fee contract, which initially was awarded in October 1998.
Work will be performed at ATK plants in Brigham City and Clearfield, Utah, along with facilities at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
Those solid rocket boosters help to propel the shuttle into orbit, permitting it to carry immensely heavy, huge structural components that are used to build the International Space Station, piece by piece, as it whirls around Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.
The shuttle also is propelled by its own main engines, drawing liquid hydrogen fuel and oxygen from an immense external fuel tank. Boosters are attached to the fuel tank before each flight.