Alliant Techsystem's Reusable Solid Rocket Motors (RSRM) ignited and sent NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis and its crew on their journey to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

Those repairs will be aided by tools developed by ATK engineers in partnership with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. ATK's two solid rocket motors provided the main thrust at liftoff and carried the shuttle orbiter and its payload to an altitude of approximately 28 miles in two minutes of flight, producing the equivalent of 15 million horsepower. After two minutes, 16 ATK booster separation motors (BSMs) — four on the forward skirt and four on the aft skirt of each booster — fired to jettison the boosters away from the shuttle orbiter and external tank, allowing the RSRMs to parachute back down through the Earth's atmosphere to be recovered and reused while Atlantis continued on its way to meet up with the Hubble Space Telescope. ATK's participation in the fifth and final Hubble Servicing Mission started in the late 1990s with the design and fabrication of the all-composite optical bench for the third generation Wide Field Camera (WFC3) scientific instrument. Along with the bench, ATK designed and fabricated the internal flexible heat pipes that maintain the detectors at their nominal operating temperatures. A dedicated team of ATK engineers and designers assisted in the integration and testing of the instrument and provided 24/7 support for three thermal vacuum tests at Goddard Space Flight Center.