Orbital Awarded $135 M by NASA for ICESat-2 Earth Science Satellite Program

• Spacecraft to be Based on LEOStar-3 Platform; Company to Build and Test Satellite at Its Gilbert, AZ Satellite Manufacturing Facility
• ICESat-2 Joins Four Other NASA Science Satellites Now in Production at Orbital

Dulles, VA - Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB), one of the world's leading space technology companies, today announced that NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has selected the company to design, build and test the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) Earth science satellite. Scheduled for launch in 2016, ICESat-2 is the next-generation successor to the original ICESat satellite, which operated from 2003 to 2010. The contract award is valued at $135 million, including the spacecraft and associated options.

Orbital will base the ICESat-2 satellite on its LEOStar-3 platform, the same technology that is being used for NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft, which is currently being assembled and tested at the company's Gilbert, Arizona satellite manufacturing facility. ICESat-2 will also be built and tested at the Gilbert location. Orbital is also in production on three science satellites for NASA at its Dulles, Virginia campus, including the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), and Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS) programs.


"Our selection by Goddard Space Flight Center to design, build and test the ICESat-2 spacecraft adds to our extensive and growing history of producing high-quality and reliable satellites for NASA's Earth and space science programs," said Mr. Mike Larkin, Orbital's Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Space Systems Group. "The ICESat-2 program will be a welcome addition to our NASA activities at the company's Gilbert, Arizona facility, which currently includes work on the LDCM satellite and on national security satellites."

Source : Orbital Sciences Corp.