Lockheed Martin Space Systems

Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company is one of the four major business divisions of Lockheed Martin. It is headquartered in Denver, Colorado with additional sites in Sunnyvale, California; Newtown, Pennsylvania; Huntsville, Alabama; and elsewhere in the US and UK. The division currently employs about 16,000 people, and its most notable products are commercial and military satellites, space probes, missile defense systems, NASA's Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (formerly Orion), and the Space Shuttle External Tank.

History

Lockheed Missiles & Space Division in Sunnyvale, CA was initially established for the Polaris Missile Program in the late 1950s.

The Polaris missile was a submarine-launched, two-stage solid-fuel nuclear-armed ballistic missile (SLBM) built during the Cold War by Lockheed Missiles & Space Division in Sunnyvale, Ca. for the United States Navy. The Polaris program started development in 1956, with its first flight test in 1958. In 1962, the USS Ethan Allen successfully fired a Polaris A-1 missile against a test target in 1960. The SLBM has evolved through Polaris (A2), Polaris (A3), Poseidon (C3) Trident I (C4) and ongoing with today's Trident II (D5). All of these were designed and managed at the Sunnyvale CA facility. Together, these are known as the Navy's Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) Program. Lockheed Martin has been the sole provider of FBM missiles since 1956.

The Polaris Program moved from Burbank CA to the newly...
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