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Leading Magazine For Space Entreprenures

VIRGINIA THE NEW SPACE HUB

By Sharon Reed

With its close proximity to the nation’s capital, the region is a hub for space and satellite companies

Like a gold rush for a piece of the rapidly growing and evolving space business, companies of all sizes and many segments of the industry are establishing or building their presence in Fairfax County and Northern Virginia.

With its close proximity to the nation’s capital, the region is a hub for space and satellite companies, from small start-ups to government contracting giants with space operations such as General Dynamics Mission Systems (Fairfax), Northrop Grumman (Falls Church area), Leidos (Reston) and Peraton (Herndon).

And while there are other space hubs nationwide, Fairfax County and Northern Virginia offer a unique combination of assets that make the region a magnet for companies of all sizes with space-related operations.

A recent arrival to Fairfax County, Virginia is Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame. Opened in Reston in 2022, Blue Origin’s Reston office is the company’s newest engineering Center of Excellence. The focus of the center is on space architecture, launch vehicle systems analysis, launch vehicle component design and validation, and safety and mission assurance.

Spire Global, which provides spacebased data, analytics, and space services and has offices in San Francisco, Boulder, Colo., Glasgow, Luxembourg, and Singapore, opened its new headquarters office in Tysons in October 2021 to accommodate the company’s growing team that provides support to its federal clients.

To find out why Northern Virginia is a growing space hub, the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority talked to five space and satellite company experts. Industry experts told us there are 10 reasons why the space industry has blasted off in Northern Virginia:

1. Location near the federal government

With its location nearby to the nation’s capital, Fairfax County is nearby to NASA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Space Force, and other agencies with space-related operations, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

At McLean and Bedford, Mass.headquartered MITRE, proximity to the nation’s capital provides “access to our sponsors, the government agencies whose missions we support,” said Kerry Buckley, vice president, Center for Integrated Transportation. MITRE’s space efforts span numerous federal agencies with space missions and authorities, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, and NASA.

“This is especially important as space missions across agencies evolve to address the growing space industry at the federal, commercial, and economic levels. We have entered a pivotal era that requires not only a whole-ofgovernment approach, but a whole-of-nation perspective as well,” Buckley added. “The Washington metropolitan area is a leader in innovation, drives policy, and boasts a wealth of academic resources – all essential factors for advancing and preserving the space domain.”

Northern Virginia offers a number of benefits to space companies from innovative startups to well-established large companies, Buckley said. “Proximity to our legislative bodies and the federal agencies is essential for all space companies given the rapid growth and dynamic expansion of the industry.”

Whereas MITRE has had a long-time presence in Fairfax County since 1963, satellite telecommunications company SpaceLink, a subsidiary of Australiabased Electro Optic Systems, is a newcomer to the county, having opened its North American headquarters in March 2021 in Tysons.

Among the reasons for the decision to locate SpaceLink’s headquarters in Fairfax County was proximity to government agencies, said Dave Bettinger, SpaceLink’s founder and former CEO and co-founder/CEO of Axta Space. “A lot of the agencies that our relay system will serve are here, whether it’s NASA, or the intelligence agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and others,” Bettinger said.

Proximity to the federal government is also important because the space industry is very regulated, added Eric Ingram, CEO of SCOUT, a space tech startup he launched in Fairfax County in 2019 that is developing the next generation of space traffic management and autonomous proximity operations services, to make space a safer and more sustainable environment.

“At the minimum, you’ve usually got three different regulatory bodies that are involved in space licensing,” Ingram said. “So being able to interact and engage with government and those putting together regulations, those advising the regulations, is important.”

In our next issue, we will examine reason #2 Proximity to other companies.