Orbital Sciences Corporation has won a $50 million contract to build a new satellite for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the space technology company announced Monday. Orbital will create and test a new heliophysics science satellite that is responsible for investigating the connection between space weather and Earth's terrestrial weather. The company said the research mission is intended to improve the understanding of the ionosphere and forecasting of space weather phenomena. The two-year satellite project will be led by the University of California at Berkeley and is planned to launch 2017. Orbital has built several satellites for the U.S. space agency in recent years.
