The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) is a Department of Defense military testing and training area located in Utah's West Desert, approximately west of

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

, Utah. UTTR is currently the largest contiguous block of over-land supersonic-authorized restricted airspace in the

contiguous United States The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawai ...

. The range, which has a footprint of of ground space and over of air space—the size of England's second largest county,

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershir ...

—is divided into North and South ranges.

Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one ...

divides the two sections of the range. The site is administered and maintained by the

US Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

's HQ UTTR, formerly known as the 388th Range Squadron (388RANS) stationed at

Hill Air Force Base Hill Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force (USAF) base located in northern Utah, just south of the city of Ogden, and bordering the Cities of Layton, Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy, and Sunset with its largest border immediately adjacent ...

, Utah.

History

The Wendover Army Air Field was created in 1942 for research and training, with testing of Republic-Ford JB-2 (U.S. copy of the

V-1 flying bomb The V-1 flying bomb (german: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Reich Aviation Ministry () designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug and in Germany ...

) in 1945-1946, the

Matador A bullfighter (or matador) is a performer in the activity of bullfighting. ''Torero'' () or ''toureiro'' (), both from Latin ''taurarius'', are the Spanish and Portuguese words for bullfighter and describe all the performers in the activit ...

in the 1950s, and

Minuteman Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Mi ...

motor testing and development in the 1960s. Wendover property was split and transferred to the nearby city, but land for the test range was kept, becoming the Utah Test and Training Range in 1979 under the

Air Force Systems Command The Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) is an inactive United States Air Force Major Command. It was established in April 1951, being split off from Air Materiel Command. The mission of AFSC was Research and Development for new weapons systems. Ove ...

Activities

Military

The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) is host to a variety of training and testing missions for the United States Air Force,

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

, and

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through ...

. The site is frequently used for the disposal of explosive ordnance, testing of experimental military equipment, as well as ground and air military training exercises. The UTTR works in close conjunction with

Dugway Proving Ground Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a U.S. Army facility established in 1942 to test biological and chemical weapons, located about southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, and south of the Utah Test and Training Range. Location Dugway ...

(DPG) for military training exercises.

Space

The site has also been used as a landing site for sample return in

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

's planetary science missions, including comet material in the

Stardust mission ''Stardust'' was a 385-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on 7 February 1999. Its primary mission was to collect dust samples from the coma of comet Wild 2, as well as samples of cosmic dust, and return them to Earth for analysis ...

and the upcoming

OSIRIS-REx OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission. The mission's primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least from 101955 Bennu, a carbo ...

mission to return material from an asteroid. UTTR was also used as the landing site for the

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book o ...

sample return mission. Although the sample return capsule's parachute failed to open and the capsule made a hard landing in the soft sandy soil, most of the collected scientific materials were salvaged. The solar wind particle collectors were made of wafers of aluminum, sapphire, silicon, germanium, gold and diamond-like amorphous carbon. When the capsule hit the desert floor, these wafers shattered into over 10,000 pieces of material. The Genesis team, along with the efforts of the Air Force's Photographic and Engineering Technician team, set up a

clean room A cleanroom or clean room is an engineered space, which maintains a very low concentration of airborne particulates. It is well isolated, well-controlled from contamination, and actively cleansed. Such rooms are commonly needed for scientif ...

at Dugway Proving Ground. NASA scientists spent months filtering through bent metal and shards of razor sharp material, each of the salvageable pieces of material going into its own small container where they were stored for a short time. Some weeks later, one of the lead scientists and the supervisor of the engineering technicians came upon what turned out to be the solar wind concentrator. Protected by a couple of aluminum braces and brackets, the concentrator had survived almost completely intact with only one small crack in one of its quadrants.

References

{{Authority control Great Salt Lake Desert Buildings and structures in Box Elder County, Utah Buildings and structures in Tooele County, Utah Ranges of the United States Air Force Military installations in Utah

History

Activities

Military

Space

See also

References