NASA has awarded a contract extension worth up to $35 million to a subsidiary of Alliant Techsystems Inc. This is for work on the Orion spaceship program.

This is in addition to a $28 million contract awarded to ATK Thiokol for the development of booster rockets for Ares 1 – the vehicle used to launch the Orion spaceship.  The extension of the contract will focus on nozzle metal hardware and maintain design and engineering analysis for a systems review to be held during December of 2006.  The contract extension will also be used for an initial test launch of Ares 1 during 2009.