Salt Lake City: Livability in the 21st Century

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ATK AEROSPACE GROUP
Right: ATK propulsion, composite and spacecraft technologies support the
successful launch of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV rocket from
Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013. The rocket carried a Wideband Global
SATCOM satellite (WGS-6) into orbit for the U.S. Air Force.
Below: Antares TM takes to the skies on a demonstration mission to the
International Space Station September 18, 2013, paving the way for
commercial cargo deliveries launching from Wallops Island, Virginia. ATK’s
CASTOR ® 30 XL rocket motor serves as the launch vehicle second stage.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ORBITAL SCIENCES CORPORATION.
Embarking on a seven-year journey to begin a four-year
mission some 746 million miles away, a highly instrumented
spacecraft roughly the size of a 30-passenger school bus
launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida,
October 15, 1997. On the record books as the third heaviest
spacecraft ever, Cassini, named for the famed eighteenth
century Italian astronomer, was on its way to the jewel of
the solar system—the mysterious ringed planet, Saturn,
and its largest moon, Titan.
Today, some sixteen years since taking to the heavens,
Cassini is operating on a second mission extension. The
orbiting spacecraft is still sending daily data streams,
providing clues to some of our most perplexing questions
about our universe.
While Cassini’s longevity has been an unanticipated
treasure to the scientific community, it is no surprise ATK
Aerospace Group, located in the western Salt Lake valley,
played a significant role in this, and many other monumental
missions, among the stars. Twin booster rockets, manufactured
right here in Utah, delivered a collective 3.4 million pounds
of thrust to help boost Cassini-Huygens on the first leg of its
extraordinary journey.
What began as a dynamite manufacturing plant near the
foothills of Salt Lake’s west side a century ago, now stands as
a world-class aerospace and defense manufacturing facility
regarded as a national asset. The first structures were erected
on an eight-thousand-acre parcel of land acquired by
Delaware-based Hercules Powder Company.
The year was 1913—when both stainless steel and the
crossword puzzle were invented. It was the time of railroad
expansion. The mining trade was strong and the demand for
explosives high. So high, in fact, that Hercules had reached
capacity at its California plant. A plant capable of producing
12 million pounds of dynamite a year was needed. With
robust dynamite sales in San Francisco and Salt Lake City,
the Rocky Mountains made for the ideal location.
Over the years, the company transformed from an explosives
production plant to a chemical company to a leader in the
aerospace propulsion industry. That transformation accelerated
after Russia launched the world’s first orbiting satellite, Sputnik.
S A L T L A K E C I T Y — L i v a b i l i t y i n t h e 2 1 s t C e n t u r y
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