Orbital ATK (NYSE: OA) has been awarded a potential five-year, $199.5 million contract to provide rockets and launch services for NASA to carry out suborbital research missions.
NASA said Thursday Orbital ATK will design, build, integrate and test scientific payloads, hardware and launch vehicles under the agency’s Sounding Rockets Program.
The company aims to help the agency conduct as many as 18 suborbital flights a year.
Sounding rockets are used to carry and place scientific instruments in some low regions of space that satellites cannot access to perform experiments.
Experiments typically last between 5 and 20 minutes, the agency noted.
The contract contains a one-year base period of performance and four option years.
Orbital ATK will perform work at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska, Andoya Rocket Range in Norway, Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands and Woomera Test Range in Australia.
