Administrator Charles Bolden On Hand For Opening Ceremony

A formal dedication ceremony was held Monday marking the completion of Orbital Sciences Corporation's new Mission Operations Center (MOC). The facility will serve as the  operations center for the company’s cargo logistics missions to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA that begins in 2011. The ribbon-cutting event was attended by NASA’s Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr. and several other senior representatives of the space agency.

Orbital MOC

After nearly three years of developing the Taurus II rocket and the Cygnus spacecraft, we are less than a year away from our first scheduled launch to the ISS,” said Mr. David W. Thompson, Orbital’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “The Mission Operations Center dedicated to the COTS and CRS programs is a critical element in our overall system architecture, providing us with robust command and control systems for the upcoming missions, as well as providing direct connectivity capabilities with our Houston-based customers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.”

While at Orbital’s Dulles, VA facilities, the NASA delegation viewed a full-scale mock-up of the Cygnus spacecraft, which will carry essential cargo to the ISS following its launch aboard Orbital’s Taurus II rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Eastern Virginia. In addition, Administrator Bolden and the other NASA officials toured Orbital’s Mission Control Complex, which includes three additional MOCs that support the company’s extensive manifest of other satellite and launch vehicle missions. The delegation also visited Orbital’s satellite manufacturing facility, at which four NASA scientific satellites – Glory, NuSTAR, OCO-2 and GEMS – are in various stages of design, production and testing by the company’s technical operations team.

 
NASA Administrator Bolden

Under a 2008 cooperative research and development agreement with NASA in its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, Orbital is developing a new autonomous spacecraft and related launch vehicle and ground infrastructure for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the ISS. The COTS program encompasses the full-scale development and flight demonstration of a commercial cargo delivery system that consists of a Taurus II medium-class space launch vehicle, a Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft, and ground-based command and control systems.

With the award of the $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract in late 2008, NASA selected Orbital to carry out eight cargo logistics missions to the ISS from 2011 to 2015. For NASA, CRS will provide an automated cargo delivery service, produced and operated in the United States, for ISS logistics support. The new system will complement Russian, European and Japanese ISS cargo vehicles.

FMI: www.orbital.com