Internships

An internship with Orbital Sciences can be an incredibly rewarding experience, as well as a great way to jump-start your career. Orbital's reputation for innovative, high quality products and successful missions is built on the foundation of its skilled workforce. While interning at Orbital, you will have the opportunity to work side-by-side with some of the most knowledgeable and experienced experts in their respective fields. You'll enjoy the satisfaction of embracing real-world challenges while you gain valuable on-the-job experience. Orbital interns are given real, hands-on work assignments involving cutting edge aerospace technology. Becoming a member of the Orbital team involves doing a lot more than you would in an ordinary job, and you will receive a lot more in return.

In addition to practical experience, Orbital provides interns with competitive salaries, access to state-of-the-art equipment, training, travel reimbursement at the beginning and the end of their assignment, housing assistance, and the possibility of future employment.

Not only do internships provide students with great on-the-job experience, they also offer the chance to experience new environments. Orbital Sciences has offices located across the country, each with unique and challenging opportunities. To find out more about work at each of our locations, please click on the links below.

Dulles, Virginia – Orbital’s Dulles, Virginia campus serves as the company’s headquarters, and is home to our corporate offices, satellite design and manufacturing, and advanced programs as well as some launch systems engineering and program management functions.

The Dulles campus is home to Orbital’s Space Systems Group (SSG) which has designed and built, or currently has on order, more than 120 satellites for national security, scientific and commercial customers. To date, these spacecraft have amassed in excess of 550 years of on-orbit operations. Our flight-proven, reliable and affordable small spacecraft are ideally suited to support many space missions, from communications and remote sensing, to Earth and space science, planetary exploration and technology demonstrations.

Our Advanced Programs Group (APG), also based on the Dulles Campus, has teamed up with NASA to develop the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to transport a crew of six to and from the International Space Station and a crew of four to and from the Moon in support of the Vision for Space Exploration. The CEV is composed of an Apollo style Crew Module (CM), a Service Module (SM), and the Launch Abort System (LAS) and will have first flight in the 2012 timeframe. Orbital Sciences Corporation has teamed with Lockheed Martin and will serve as the developer of the LAS.

Our Launch Systems Group (LSG) in Dulles is the home to several of the founding programs for Orbital's Space Launch business - namely, the Pegasus and Taurus space launch programs. These two programs primarily serve NASA in the role of launching small experimental satellites into Low-Earth Orbit. Pegasus, which has completed 37 launches to date, is an innovative 3-stage air-launch vehicle that is carried to an altitude of 40,000 ft by LSG's L011 airplane prior to being released and ignited. Taurus, which has completed 7 launches to date, is a ground-launch 4-stage companion rocket to Pegasus that provides the ability to launch larger satellites. LSG East is also home to the Systems Engineering teams for two of LSG's largest missile defense programs: the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program, and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program. Orbital's role on both of these programs is to provide the booster rocket that carries the interceptor payload toward incoming missiles. The GMD program has completed the development phase, performed several successful flight tests, and has begun deployment in Alaska and California. The KEI program is still in the development phase and has completed its Preliminary Design Review in preparation for a first demonstration launch in 2008."

Columbia, Maryland –Orbital’s Transportation Management Systems ( TMS) is a leading integrator system that combines satellite navigation and wireless communications to enable municipal transit and other fleet operators to manage and dispatch vehicles.

At Orbital TMS, interns receive lots of hands-on experience. During the summer of 2006, Orbital interns were able to conduct integration and test procedures on our product line and also travel to customer sites such as Denver, Colorado and San Diego, California to work directly with the customer and see how the Orbital TMS products work in the field.

Greenbelt , Maryland – Orbital’s Technical Services Division (TSD) provides cost-effective engineering, production and technical management expertise for space-related science and defense programs. TSD supplies engineers, scientists, technicians and other professionals with specific knowledge in the areas that our customers are pursuing. These Orbital employees often work side-by-side with our customers’ technical staff at their facilities.

Chandler, Arizona – Orbital’s Chandler, Arizona facility is home to the majority of Orbital’s Launch Systems Group where engineering, design, testing, and manufacturing of the company’s various orbital and sub-orbital space launch vehicles is performed. Orbital’s space launch vehicles range from Pegasus, the world’s only air-launched space launch vehicle, to the family of Minotaur launch vehicles that provide highly reliable, cost-effective launch services for military-sponsored payloads. Orbital is also a leading provider of a wide range of ballistic, or suborbital, launch vehicles employed in the development and testing of the nation’s missile defense as well as for technology validation and research missions.

Interns have been tasked with projects such as project design reviews, fatigue analysis, program development (including the creation of test software), manufacturing support, test preparation and organization, and creating qualification matrices.

Vandenberg Air Force Base, California – The Vandenberg AFB, California facility is part of Orbital's Launch Systems Group, and is where final system integration and test activities are conducted for various orbital and sub-orbital space launch vehicles. Vandenberg also serves as one of Orbital's primary launch sites.

During the summer of 2006, Orbital interns at Vandenberg were tasked with many diverse projects such as designing/procuring material for a motor tie down system to secure rocket motors to integration dollies, assisting with the preparation of integration and test procedures, and working closely with mentor Engineers to complete work packages for the Pegasus program.

Intern Testimomials

Stefanie Goodwin, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Intern, Structural Analysis, Space Systems Group

“My summer internship experience with Orbital was an amazing opportunity to learn more about my personal strengths and what type of career path I should follow. The environment was challenging, yet fun! Questions were always well received and all my projects were pertinent and relevant to my field of study. This opportunity was perfect for someone like me who wanted to be challenged and grow!”

Umar Aziz, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Computer Science Intern, Information Systems, Corporate Headquarters

Working with Orbital has been a great experience. As an IT major, I never thought I would be working for an aerospace engineering company. I was placed in the Information Systems Department, which ended up being the perfect fit for me. Instead of doing stereotypical intern work, I had the opportunity to get hands-on experience. I was part of the Microsoft SharePoint Portal administration and Primavera Project Management administration. It’s exciting to know that the projects I worked on will affect every single employee on a daily basis.

Walter Borges, University of Virginia
Engineering Intern, Ground Software Engineering, Space System Group

At Orbital I'm not just filing papers or making Xerox copies of random documents. Instead, I was given the opportunity to work on real projects. Working on these real projects gave me a sense of how much pride Orbital has in their interns. Even though I was only here for 3 months, I felt the same respect and expectations as a full-time employee.

Isaac Tetzloff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Engineering Intern, Guidance Navigation Control, Space Systems Group

My internship at Orbital has provided me a summer full of learning opportunities and personal development, along with the chance to apply knowledge from my studies at MIT in a real life application. I was given my project during my first week and was given the freedom to complete the project in my own way. My project, a Matlab/STK tool which optimizes transfer burns for geostationary satellites, will be used in upcoming missions and will continue to be developed and improved. Knowing that my summer project will be used in future high profile missions has given me the greatest sense of accomplishment I have ever had.