News & Links

SM-3

 

Ultramet manufactures rhenium components for the solid divert and attitude control system of the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), the Navy’s mobile ballistic intercept system.

On February 20, 2008, the Navy used the SM-3 to intercept a broken spy satellite and explode the satellite’s tank carrying toxic hydrazine rocket fuel. Right, launch of SM-3 from USS Lake Erie (CG 70) on February 20, 2008.

Personal Air Vehicle

Ultramet’s open-cell ceramic foam was an enabling technology for a modified RV-4 aircraft that won the $50,000 Noise Prize in the 2007 CAFE Foundation’s NASA Personal Air Vehicle Centennial Challenge on August 11, 2007, in Santa Rosa, California. The muffler on the RV-4 was lined with Ultramet’s silicon carbide foam broadband sound absorber and was built using Ultramet’s assembly techniques. While flying at 192 mph, the aircraft operated at a noise level three times quieter than that of most small aircraft.

 

AFRL

Ultramet’s work in advancing structural thermal protection systems, particularly for the scramjet, is included in the 2007 edition of AFRL Technology Milestones. Published annually by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Ohio), AFRL Technology Milestones is used by AFRL to inform leadership and the general public of significant technology advances and revolutionary developments in the Air Force research program

 

NASA

NASA has included four Ultramet SBIR programs among its “SBIR/STTR Success Stories”:
Fiber-Reinforced Ceramic Matrix Composites for High-Temperature Environments
High Temperature Oxidation-Resistant Thruster Materials
High Temperature Turbine Blades
Lightweight Structural Foams from Ceramic Materials