It was the global leader in the development and manufacture of two-phase thermal solutions for spaceflight applications, and it was a small satellite mission provider.

Around the same time, it ventured from pure engineering to manufacturing satellite hardware and tools for astronauts, such as a popular power wrench.

Welch strengthened Swales's control systems offerings, Tom Wilson told the Washington Business Journal.

According to Space Business News, Swales was transferring technology from the FUSE project to the Naval EarthMap Observer (NEMO) remote sensing-satellite.

A team led by Swales was awarded the rights to commercialize NASA's Small Explorer-Lite (SMEX-Lite) spacecraft technology in 1999.

In November of that year, Swales wrested a five-year, $240 million NASA contract from its much larger local rival Federal Data Corp. (later acquired by Northrop Grumman).

Around the same time as the Dynatherm purchase, Swales opened an office in El Segundo, California, to be more accessible to the commercial aerospace industry near Los Angeles.

The company's Beltsville, Maryland site was expanded later in the year with the addition of a 34,000-square-foot office and production facility, bringing its total space there to more than 220,000 square feet.

NASA was farming out more of its engineering work in order to reduce its staffing levels, noted the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia.

Still, with about 900 employees (125 of them at Langley, according to the Daily Press), it was not too large to compete as a small business, which conveyed certain advantages in the bidding process.

In 2002, Swales took over the lead contractor position in a $225 million, five-year contract to provide NASA Langley with Systems Analysis and Mission Support (SAMS), displacing previous agreements held by giant Lockheed Martin and Federal Data Corp.

Swales was also a partner on a Boeing-led team contracted by NASA to develop nuclear electric power systems deep space exploration.

Aavid, the world leader in thermal management for electronics, brought high-volume manufacturing capacity and global marketing connections to the partnership.

Wilson told the Washington Post that as computer chips became faster and hotter, they could benefit from the heat pipes the company had developed to regulate the temperatures of satellite components.

Swales was supported by a team including Millennium Engineering and Integration Company and subcontractors SRS Technologies and Vanguard Research Inc.

THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms) was designed to track disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere using five satellites.