Responding to customer demands for faster paced innovation and more production capacity, Northrop Grumman [NOC] on Thursday conducted a full-scale static hot fire test of a new solid rocket motor (SRM) designed and developed in less than a year, part of a concurrent effort to develop nine new SRMs in support of new and existing programs.
The 26-second motor burn at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Promontory, Utah, was part of the company’s new Solid Motor Annual Rocket Technology (SMART) Demonstrator. The company plans annual SMART Demonstrations to test new materials, parts, processes, and SRMs of all sizes, and to onboard new suppliers, strengthening the supply chain, Northrop Grumman said Dec. 8.
SMART Demo will also help streamline the development and qualification of new technologies. Northrop Grumman said its work so far with SMART Demo shows that lead times were reduced by 75 percent for new technologies, alternate manufacturing materials, and processes.
“Our goal is to design, build and test a new solid rocket motor along with associated tooling on an annual basis, this being the first year,” Ben Case, principal investigator for SMART Demo, said during a virtual media briefing ahead of the test.
The SRM tested on Dec. 7 included a new, low-cost propellant that was developed this year that can operate across a “wide range of temperatures,” including cold weather, he said. The motor also contained several items that were additively manufactured, including a “key structure in our nozzle that was printed from titanium,” making it “the first propulsion systems test that includes a 3D printed metal part,” he said.
Additive manufacturing was also used for a polymer propellant casting tool to shape the propellant grain, Case said, highlighting that this tool “was the first of its kind.”
The test also demonstrated new materials for the nozzle and other insulators from new suppliers, he said.
So far, SMART Demo has been internally funded but there may be opportunities for external funding if government partners want certain technologies to be tested, Case said.
New programs that Northrop Grumman is developing new SRMs for include the Air Force’s Ground Based Strategic Deterrent Sentinel ICBM, two hypersonic programs, GEM 63XL motors, and NASA’s Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension for the agency’s Space Launch System, Wendy Williams, vice president of propulsion systems at Northrop Grumman, said during the briefing. The GEM 63XLs will help power United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan launch vehicle’s first test flight scheduled for Christmas Eve. ULA is a partnership between Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].
Northrop Grumman is also expanding its facilities in Utah to meet growing SRM demand. The company is building 11 new building and modifying 16 more and expects to be able to double production in the 2028 to 2030 period, Williams said.
In addition to the facilities, Williams said the propulsion business advancing its digital technologies, automation and processes to lower costs and speed development and production in line with customers’ demands.
“So, these efforts will optimize our facilities in a way that enable us to increase our capacity, scalability, capability, and enhance overall production and performance,” she said.
Case said the company is creating modular tooling for the rocket testbed to quickly scale up or down the sizes of motors that can be tested. In 2024, he said that based on “industry customer needs it’s going to look completely different, meaning diameter, length, etcetera.”
Lessons learned from developing and testing technologies this year will also be applied to advancing these technologies for SMART Demo in 2024, Case said.
The propulsion systems business makes large SRMs for launch vehicles and is part of Northrop Grumman’s Space Systems segment. The company’s Defense Systems segment makes smaller SRMs for man-portable weapons and missiles launched from ground vehicles, ships, and aircraft.
The “adaptability and flexibility” of SMART Demo will enable testing that obtains “meaningful data at a high” technology readiness level “that supports all of our products,” Case said.
The introduction of SMART Demo and Northrop Grumman’s commitment to expanding its SRM production capabilities with a goal to also lowering costs comes amid not only increasing customer demand across the gamut of weapons and space launch vehicles but also at a time when startup companies such as Anduril Industries, Ursa Major, and X-Bow Systems are entering the market to develop and produce SRMs. These companies say they can build SRMs faster and at a fraction of the cost of the legacy providers, which include Northrop Grumman and L3Harris Technologies [LHX] through its acquisition this year of Aerojet Rocketdyne.