Medium-Range Targets

For nearly 20 years, Orbital has provided suborbital target rockets, having built and launched nearly 200 target vehicles for more than a dozen customers.  Our most recent medium-range target is the multi-mode Medium Range Target (MRT) which can be air-, ground- or sea-launched to offer a broad range of ballistic trajectories.  MRT is based on a Castor 4B rocket motor and is equipped with Orbital’s most advanced avionics package. Designed to accommodate flexible hardware and software designs, MRT allows customers to select from a wide variety of mission parameters in a single target design with minimal lead time before mission execution. The air-launched MRT is launched from a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft, using a parachute extraction and descent system.

To date, Orbital has conducted five MRT missions with four additional launches planned in the near future using both the ground- and air-launch variants.