Twenty-eight orbital missions and ten years later, Pegasus has become one of the world's most recognizable symbols of the "New Space Age," a time when commercial satellite operators, not government agencies, have become the driving force behind the global space industry.

In the decade since its maiden flight, Pegasus has also become the world's standard for affordable and reliable small launch vehicles. In the last three years, Pegasus has carried out 14 consecutive successful missions, while its overall mission success record is 25 out of 28 missions. It also has a full launch manifest for the future, with 12 launches carrying 27 payloads scheduled over the next two years alone.

Mr. David W. Thompson, Orbital's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "The Pegasus program has played an enormous role in our company's development from a fledgling commercial space enterprise in the late 1980's into one of the largest and most capable space technology and satellite services companies in the world today.

"For example, the low-cost satellite network of our ORBCOMM affiliate is a direct by-product of the Pegasus launcher technology. We custom-designed the lightweight, disk-shaped ORBCOMM satellites for the Pegasus rocket so that we could launch as many as eight spacecraft aboard one relatively low-cost rocket. "No other space launch vehicle in the world could have deployed ORBCOMM's 35 in-orbit satellites as cost effectively and reliably as Pegasus," said Thompson.

Mr. Thompson continued his remarks, adding, "Since our first Pegasus contract in 1988, Orbital has received orders totaling over $1 billion for more than 50 Pegasus rockets from 12 customers in the United States and overseas.

"On this important tenth anniversary of its first flight, I want to thank all the people, at Orbital and our suppliers, who worked on the Pegasus program over the years for making it such a huge technical and business success. I applaud their remarkable achievements over the past decade," he added.

The Pegasus launch vehicle is used by commercial, government and international customers to launch small satellites, weighing up to 1,000 pounds, into low-Earth orbit.

Its patented air-launch method has enabled Orbital to conduct operations from five separate launch sites, including four in the United States and one in Europe, the first time a space launch vehicle has provided such operational flexibility.

Pegasus is carried aloft by the company-owned L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft to an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet over open ocean areas, is released and then free-falls in a horizontal position for five seconds before igniting its first stage rocket motor to begin its ascent into orbit.

Orbital has also adapted Pegasus-proven technology to a family of commercial and government advanced-technology launch vehicles. Orbital's ground-launched Taurus� rocket combines a commercial or government-supplied first stage with Pegasus-derived upper stages to create a reliable commercial launch vehicle that today boasts a perfect five-for-five mission success record, including the delivery of nine satellites into orbit.

Orbital is also under contract with the U.S. Air Force to combine deactivated Minuteman II rocket motors with Pegasus upper stages to produce the four-stage Orbital/Suborbital Program Space Launch Vehicle (OSP SLV), sometimes referred to as the Minotaur, which is used exclusively to launch U.S. Government satellites.

The inaugural flight of the OSP SLV, which occurred on January 26, 2000, resulted in the successful deployment of 11 small satellites.

Orbital's Pegasus-based technology and air-launch operational methods are also being applied to develop advanced vehicles for NASA. Orbital is building a set of modified Pegasus vehicles for NASA's X-43 program, also known as Hyper-X.

These Pegasus-derived, air-launched rockets will be used to accelerate small scramjet-powered aircraft to test the hypersonic propulsion and flight characteristics of future, very-high-speed transport and military aircraft.

Finally, Orbital is leading NASA's X-34 reusable launch vehicle technology demonstration program. Orbital has designed, built and is now testing the first of three X-34 vehicles that the company will produce and operate.

For the X-34 program, Orbital is employing the air-launch concept and has specially modified the company's L-1011 carrier aircraft used for Pegasus missions to accommodate X-34 flights.

Orbital is one of the largest space technology and satellite services companies in the world, with 1999 revenues of nearly $900 million. The company, which is headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, employs over 5,200 people at its major facilities in the United States, Canada and several overseas locations.