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ORBITAL SHIPS FIRST X-34 SPACEPLANE FROM FACTORY IN VIRGINIA TO NASA TESTING FACILITY IN CALIFORNIA

Company’s Reusable Launch Vehicle to Demonstrate New Technologies for Hypersonic Flight

(DULLES, VA 22 FEBRUARY 1999) – Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE:ORB) has shipped the first X-34 vehicle from its assembly and integration facility in Dulles, Virginia to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Dryden Flight Research Center in California, the company announced today. Orbital is currently building two more X-34 Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) technology demonstrators that will be used later this year for the first approach and landing tests and then for 26 additional unpowered and powered flights for which NASA has contracted with Orbital. The total value of Orbital’s X-34 contract with NASA now stands at approximately $85 million.

“The shipment of the first X-34 vehicle marks the transition from the development phase of the program to the field test phase,” said Dr. Robert E. Lindberg, Orbital’s Vice President and X-34 Program Manager. “When fully operational, the X-34 will validate and expand the high-speed and high-altitude flight research last carried out by NASA’s X-15 spaceplane more than 30 years ago,” Lindberg concluded.

At Dryden, the X-34 will be subjected to a series of ground and in-flight tests using Orbital’s L-1011 carrier aircraft. A team of 15 Orbital engineers and technicians will operate and maintain the spaceplane during these tests. An objective of the X-34 program is to demonstrate that a reusable launch vehicle can be economically flown using a small ground support team.

The X-34 is a fully reusable test-bed vehicle that is 58 feet long with a wing span of almost 28 feet. It will be air-launched from beneath Orbital’s L-1011 carrier aircraft in similar fashion to Orbital’s well-known Pegasus rocket. The X-34 program will demonstrate new technologies that are key to developing and operating RLVs designed to significantly reduce the cost of launching satellites into orbit. Among the technologies that X-34 will demonstrate are an all-composite airframe structure, composite fuel tanks, state-of-the-art thermal protection materials, and autonomous control and landing systems, as well as the ability to conduct flight operations through inclement weather and to safely abort space missions.

In addition to its role as a demonstration vehicle for RLV technology, the X-34 has also been designed as a versatile platform with the ability to host a wide variety of high-speed aerospace research projects or micro-gravity experiments, among others.

Orbital is one of the largest space and information systems companies in the world, with 1998 revenues of about $735 million. The company, which is headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, employs 4,500 people and has major facilities in nine states and several international locations. Orbital is the world’s leading manufacturer of low-cost space systems and products, including satellites, launch vehicles, electronics and sensors, satellite ground systems and software, and satellite-based navigation and communications products. Through its ORBCOMM and ORBIMAGE affiliates, Orbital is also a pioneering operator of satellite networks that provide data communications and high-resolution imagery services to customers all around the world.