Sounding rockets

Almost all sounding rockets use solid motors.

• Astrobee
• Black Brant
• S-310, S-520
• Terrier-Orion, Terrier-Malemute
• VSB-30

Missiles

Due to reliability, ease of storage and handling, solid rockets are used on missiles and ICBMs.

• Air-to-air missiles: AIM-9 Sidewinder
• Ballistic missiles: Jericho, Sejjil
• ICBMs: LGM-30 Minuteman, UGM-133 Trident II, LGM-118 Peacekeeper, RT-2PM Topol, DF-41, M51 SLBM

Orbital rockets

Solid rockets are suitable for launching small payloads to orbital velocities, especially if three or more stages are used. Many of these are based on repurposed ICBMs.

Larger liquid-fueled orbital rockets often use solid rocket boosters to gain enough initial thrust to launch the fully fueled rocket.

Solid fuel is also used for some upper stages, particularly the Star 37 (sometimes referred to as the "Burner" upper stage) and the Star 48 (sometimes referred to as the "Payload Assist Module", or PAM), both manufactured originally by Thiokol, and today by Orbital ATK. They are used to lift large payloads to intended orbits (such as the Global Positioning System satellites), or smaller payloads to interplanetary—or even interstellar—trajectories. Another solid-fuel upper stage, used by the Space Shuttle and the Titan IV, was the Boeing-manufactured Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).

• Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 were both sent out of the solar system by Star 37E upper stages from Atlas-Centaur rockets.
• Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were both sent out of the solar system by Star 37E upper stages from Titan IIIE rockets.
• Magellan was sent to Venus on an IUS after being deployed from Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-30.
• Galileo was sent to Jupiter on an IUS after being deployed from Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-34.
• Ulysses was sent to Jupiter on an IUS and a Star 48 PAM after being deployed from Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-41. It then was placed in a polar orbit around the Sun following a gravity assist around Jupiter.
• New Horizons was sent out of the solar system on a Star 48 PAM from an Atlas V rocket.

Some rockets, like the Antares (manufactured by Orbital ATK), have mandatory solid-fuel upper stages. The Antares rocket uses the Orbital ATK-manufactured Castor 30 as an upper stage.