Thiokol

Thiokol was an American corporation founded on December 5, 1929, by Bevis Longstreth in Trenton, New Jersey, as the Thiokol Chemical Company, initially concerned with rubber and related chemicals built around a synthetic polymer whose name derives from the Greek words for sulfur and glue. The company entered rocket propulsion after scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that its polymers made excellent binders for solid rocket fuel, and in 1974 it won the contract to build the solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle. On January 28, 1986, an O-ring seal manufactured by Morton Thiokol, formed by Thiokol 1982 merger with Morton Salt, failed in cold conditions and caused the Space Shuttle Challenger to break apart 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members, even though test data as early as 1977 had revealed the flaw. The company was later split in 1989, renamed Cordant Technologies in 1998, merged into the AIC Group in 2000, purchased by Alliant Techsystems in 2001 for 2.9 billion dollars, and passed through that company successor Orbital ATK to Northrop Grumman, which acquired it in 2018. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/