Utah inventions: The world's largest rocket motor

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

Editor's Note: This article is part of the Utah Inventions series, which features a different inventor or invention with Utah ties each Wednesday. Tips for future articles can be sent to ncrofts@ksl.com.PROMONTORY — With aerospace giant Orbital ATK based in the state, Utah has witnessed a number of advances in rocket technology up close.

What was the latest rocket advance to be invented and put to the test in Utah? The world's largest motor, called the QM-1. The rocket motor was designed by Orbital ATK for NASA to become the agency's first Space Launch System booster qualifications motor.

"The hardest part about getting anywhere in space is just getting off the surface of the earth," NASA astronaut Stan Love told KSL in March. "That's the job of this thing…to lift those huge, heavy weights off the earth and get them up into the atmosphere and eventually off to Mars."

The motor, which burns 1,385,000 pounds of propellant in 2 minutes, passed its first ground test with flying colors back in March. The full-duration static test in Promontory took about 2 minutes to complete.

The powerful rocket motor is enormous. The booster stands at 177 feet tall, about the same height as a 17-story building, and produces 3.6 million pounds of maximum thrust when fired.

Two of the QM-1 rocket motors and four RS-25 engines will eventually be used to propel NASA's Orion spacecraft, which is intended to travel to destinations such as Mars and an asteroid, according to NASA. The phase two test will take place in 2016, with flights planned for 2018.

"This is the most advanced propulsion system ever built and will power this rocket to places we've never reached in the history of human spaceflight," SLS program manager Todd May said in a statement.