By Kendra Marr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 21, 2007

Orbital Sciences, a rocket and space technology manufacturer for the government and military, is embarking on a major expansion of its headquarters in Dulles, adding as many as four buildings and about 600 jobs to its campus.

The company's 77-acre campus along Route 28 employs 1,500 workers. More than 100 employees work at leased office space a few miles down the road, and Orbital continues to grow. To date, the company said it has $4 billion worth of backlogged contracts.

"Orbital's business is doing extremely well and growing quite rapidly," said Barron Beneski, a company spokesman.

The buildings -- totaling 140,000 square feet -- will house office, engineering and manufacturing space on an undeveloped tract of land adjacent to the campus. Construction on the first building has been approved by Loudoun County and is scheduled to begin in early 2008. The first new employees could occupy the space in 2009.

"The next several years we will build buildings as the need arises," Beneski said.

The federal government is Orbital Sciences' biggest customer. The satellite company has contracts with the Defense Department and military intelligence agencies.

Space flight, in particular, is fueling much of Orbital Sciences' growth, Beneski said. In 2010 NASA plans to retire the Space Shuttle. The company is part of a team led by Lockheed Martin that is producing the next generation of manned spacecraft to launch astronauts to the moon and beyond. The company stands to make $450 million to $500 million over the next 12 years from its role in the program.

Orbital also manufactures commercial communication satellites for companies such as Intelsat and SES Global.

"In the Washington area, there's not a whole lot of manufacturing going on," Beneski said. "Consultants and IT people produce a lot of paper and gigabytes. We actually produce real stuff."

In 1992, Orbital Sciences was one of the first companies to settle in the Dulles corridor. But the company hasn't always been so financially fortunate.

Its initial stock offering was delayed by its underwriter in 1990 after media reports of the risks it faced in a pending rocket launch. Then, a series of rockets went off course and into wrong orbits.

Still, the company was growing and decided to move to larger space at its current campus.

But in 2000 it reported losses of millions of dollars. The satellite-messaging firm Orbcomm Global, a joint venture of Teleglobe and Orbital Sciences, filed for bankruptcy protection after defaulting on interest payments on $170 million in bonds.

Soon after, the company realized it could not fill all the space it planned at the Dulles campus. It had sold unsuccessful subsidiaries to reduce debt during the campus's construction.

Fortunes reversed again after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the government boosted spending on defense and technology.