Orbital, Indium Ink Hosted-payload Deal

摘要

Orbital Sciences Corp. will find customers to fly piggyback payloads on Iridium Communications' Iridium Next low-orbiting satellite constellation and has agreed to pay a nonrefund-able $10 million this year to reserve up to 20 percent of Iridi-um's hosted-payload capacity, Orbital and Iridium announced Feb. 3. Under the agreement, Dulles, Va.-based Orbital, which recently won a $150 million contract to assemble, integrate and test the 81 Iridium Next satellites, will be in charge of the customers - mainly government agencies - it finds that are willing to place their own sensors on all or part of Iridium's fleet.