Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB] has been selected by NASA for the prime contractor role on the space agency’s Sounding Rocket Operations Contract II (NSROC II) program.
The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity NSROC II contract carries a maximum total value of $310 million over its five-year term, with a current expected value of at least $125 million.
Under the NSROC II program, which is primarily centered at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Orbital will be responsible for planning, coordinating and carrying out sounding rocket missions from both domestic and international locations. In addition, the company will work with NASA to develop and implement advanced sounding rocket capabilities to be used on the program.
Sounding rockets are smaller-sized launch vehicles that conduct suborbital missions for high-altitude scientific and atmospheric research.
“Orbital’s Technical Services Division is honored to have been awarded the NSROC II contract,” Orbital Vice President John Pullen said in a July 30 statement released by the company. “Orbital has a long history of supporting NASA’s sounding rocket program, which provides space scientists and weather researchers with valuable data for their investigations.”
Orbital was a major contractor on the original Sounding Rocket Operations Contract from 1999 to 2009. The new contract and its other NASA-related work will increase the number of staff and contractors working at Wallops to more than 250, the company announced recently.
In addition to the NSROC II contract, which the company will begin to execute over the next several months, Orbital has a major launch site development project under way with NASA and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport to prepare the Wallops Flight Facility to accommodate final assembly and launch operations for the company’s new Taurus II medium- class space launch vehicle and Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft for missions to the International Space Station. Initial Taurus II launches from Wallops are scheduled to begin next year.