ATK Components Help Launch Delta IV Rocket

ATK reports that Boeing's heavy, tri-rocket system, the Delta IV, successfully launched the Defense Support Program's 23rd and last satellite (DSP-23) designed to give warning of incoming missiles. The system was used in the first Gulf War and is also designed to detect nuclear explosions or testing on Earth. There has been some effort to use the system to detect natural disasters like volcanic eruptions and wild fires.

Alliant Techsystems (ATK) designed and produced many of the components in the rocket. For example, heat shielding, or thermal protection, is supplied by ATK, protecting the RS-68 rocket engine's nozzle, which is also produced by ATK. The rocket engine itself is built by Pratt and Whitney. Temperatures at the nozzle can go higher than 4000 degrees, Fahrenheit. Many other components of the big rocket are produced by ATK, including the protective shell that holds the RS-68 main engine, "the center body structure that connects the liquid oxygen (LOX) and hydrogen tanks and the LOX forward skirt on all three of the Common Booster Cores (CBC)," the nose cones for the two rockets strapped to the main rocket, and the various trusses used to connect the fuel tanks in the upper stage of the rocket.

The Delta IV is an impressive rocket, consisting of a center rocket engine with two , smaller, boosters strapped to its sides, essentially, three rockets strapped together and ignited. The engines are powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and, amazingly, are environmentally friendly as the only byproduct produced is steam. Older rockets used liquid-oxygen and kerosene. The new rocket is more reliable, about a third more efficient, more simple in design, and less costly. It is also incredibly powerful, propelling as much as 50,800 pound into orbit with 650,000 pounds of thrust.

The rocket blasts off and once high up the two boosters are jettisoned. Later, the main rocket engine is left behind and a smaller engine is used to make the final boost, but, more importantly, to accurately position the satellite, or in some cases more than one satellite, in orbit.

The DSP satellites are designed to detect thermal radiation on earth, marking the sites of missile launches, for example, Scud missiles launched in the first Gulf War. Older, Titan III rockets launched most of the system, one satellite being launched from the Space Shuttle. The final and 23rd satellite was launched with the Delta IV.

ATK Helps Launch Delta IV, ATK
How the Delta IV Heavy Works, How Stuff Works