Orbital was headquartered in Dulles, Virginia and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol ORB.

Orbital was founded and incorporated in 1982 by three friends who had met earlier while at Harvard Business School — David W. Thompson, Bruce Walker Ferguson, and Scott L. Webster.

Shortly following the successful Pegasus launch, Orbital conducted an initial public offering (IPO) in 1990 and began trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

In the early 2000s, Orbital continued expanding its missile defense systems business with a US$900 million award to develop, build, test and support interceptor booster vehicles.

In 2006, Orbital conducted its 500th mission since the company's founding with products that included satellites, launch vehicles, and missile defense systems.

In 2007, the first interplanetary spacecraft built by Orbital, Dawn was launched on an eight-year, three-billion-mile journey to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

A major milestone in the company's history was in 2008 when it received a long-term NASA contract to provide cargo transportation services to and from the International Space Station (ISS) with a value of approximately US$1.9 billion for missions from 2011 to 2015.

[11] In 1997, Orbital acquired CTA, Inc, a company that, under the spacecraft design engineering and business leadership of Tom van der Heyden - designer of the GEOStar spacecraft - had designed and built the first geostationary "lightsat" under contract to Indonesia for Asia's first Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) television broadcast program, and the world's first S-Band television broadcast satellite - providing an entry into the fast-growing Geosynchronous (GEO) communications satellite market.

[6] The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the acquisition with conditions on 5 June 2018, and one day later, Orbital ATK were absorbed and became Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.

Earth imagery and high resolution digital imaging satellites such as the OrbView series are also developed and manufactured by Orbital.

The science and environmental satellites developed by Orbital perform scientific research, carry out deep space exploration (e.g.

[15] The Minotaur ground-launched launch vehicles combine Pegasus upper-stages with either government-supplied or commercially available first-stage rocket motors to boost larger payloads to orbit.

Minotaur IV combines decommissioned Peacekeeper rocket motors with proven Orbital avionics and fairings to provide increased lifting capacity for government-sponsored payloads.

[16] In support of human space systems, Orbital is one of two companies providing commercial cargo resupply services to the ISS for NASA.

Orbital's medium-class rocket - Antares is used to launch the Cygnus advanced maneuvering spacecraft to deliver cargo to the ISS.

[16] For National Security Space systems, Orbital provides products ranging from smaller, more affordable spacecraft busses to hosted payload applications.

Typically, it supplies specialized personnel — engineers, scientists, technicians and other professionals — with specific knowledge in the areas that its customers are pursuing.

They perform a wide range of functions, from system-level efforts such as special payload equipment and training support for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions to component-level tasks including development of high-energy microwave transmitters for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

TMS clients included some of the nation's largest fleet management systems, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

[32] Orbital built Science and Environmental satellites conduct astrophysics, Remote sensing/Earth Observation, heliophysics, planetary exploration and technology demonstration missions.