Orbital Sciences Corporation

Orbital Sciences Corporation
legal form	Corporation
founding	1982
Seat	Dulles , United States
Branch	Armaments, space travel

Orbital Sciences Corporation ( OSC for short , often also called Orbital ) is a Dulles , Virginia- based company that specializes in the manufacture and launch of space launch vehicles and satellites . It was founded in 1982 by three befriended Harvard Business School graduates , David Thompson, Scott Webster and Bruce Ferguson, and employed around 2,700 people in 2016. The first product and core of the founding idea was the Transfer Orbit Stage (TOS) for NASA .

With its Antares rocket and the Cygnus space transporter , Orbital Sciences is one of the two companies, alongside SpaceX , that supply the US section of the International Space Station . Orbital was also instrumental in the planned project Armor National Missile Defense of the United States participated. Today the company is developing the Omega heavy-duty missile .

In February 2015, Orbital Sciences Corporation, together with the defense division of Alliant Techsystems, became part of the new company Orbital ATK , which was acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2018 and renamed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems .

Developments and investments

Launchers

• Minotaur
• Pegasus (launch of Stargazer rocket launcher )
• Taurus
• Antares (formerly Taurus II)
• OSP-2 Minotaur IV (a modified version of Peacekeeper - ICBM )
• omega

Experimental aircraft

• X-34 (a reusable, remote-controlled transport aircraft)

National Missile Defense

• GMD Boost Vehicle
• Kinetic Energy Interceptors (KEI)
• Ballistic target vehicles
• GQM-163A Coyote
• Test environments for suborbital missiles

Satellites and space probes

• GEO satellites
• LEO satellites
• Dawn spacecraft for NASA
• Optus D1

Others

• DART
• Orbital space plane
• Orion spaceship (in collaboration with Lockheed Martin )
• Cygnus space transporter

Individual evidence

1. ^ Orbital ATK: Company Overview. Retrieved February 3, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Launch licenses from Orbital Sciences Corp, among others, on the Federal Aviation Administration website , accessed on May 16, 2019.
3. ^ Orbital ATK, Merger of Orbital Sciences and ATK, Begins Operations. February 10, 2015, accessed February 3, 2016 .