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MAGNA — More aerospace tech jobs are coming to Utah, helping to get internet to places all over the world.
Northrop Grumman will be adding roughly 200 new jobs in Utah to increase solid rocket motor manufacturing capacity after the company was awarded a multiyear contract valued at more than $2 billion from the United Launch Alliance.
"This contract is a testament to Northrop Grumman's long standing partnership with ULA and reinforces our reputation as the leading provider of solid rocket motors," Trevor Clingman, communications specialist at Northrop Grumman, said Wednesday. "The award ... allows for the modernization of current facilities and the construction of new state-of-the-art facilities, and provides multiple years of high-rate production potentially extending work to the end of this decade and beyond."
Northrop Grumman is based in Virginia but has multiple business operations in Utah.
The contract will be used for increasing the production of its 63-inch-diameter Graphite Epoxy Motor solid rocket booster (GEM 63) as well as the extended length variation of the same booster (GEM 63XL).
And what exactly is a Graphite Epoxy Motor solid rocket booster?
"At approximately 72 feet long, the GEM 63XL solid rocket boosters are the largest single-cast motors, which means that they are manufactured as one unit (or) piece versus segments," Clingman said.
The $2 billion award will support multiple United Launch Alliance customers, as well as Amazon's Project Kuiper.
Project Kuiper is a low Earth orbit satellite system designed to provide fast, affordable satellite broadband internet to service tens of millions of people in unserved and underserved communities around the world.
"Northrop Grumman will provide the solid rocket propulsion, GEM 63 and GEM 63XL boosters, that will support United Launch Alliance's Atlas V and Vulcan launch vehicles with the deployment of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite constellation," Clingman said.
In addition to the Project Kuiper initiative, Clingman said Northrop Grumman's GEM motors play a "critical role" in launches that are furthering space exploration and supporting high-priority national security space launch missions.
