Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB)
announced
today that the Southeastern Michigan Snow and Ice Management (SEMSIM
Partners)
have selected the company’s ORBTRAC-100 system to help track and manage a
portion of its fleets of road maintenance vehicles. The company’s automatic
vehicle location (AVL) and data collection system will be installed on 290
snowplows, with phased installations of the SEMSIM Partners’ entire
500-vehicle
fleet over the next two to three years. A significant enhancement to be
built
into this project will be the ability to distribute data over the Internet
through a browser-based system to the various road maintenance agencies that
make up the SEMSIM partnership.

In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, SEMSIM Partners unites the four
largest
road maintenance agencies in Southeast Michigan to improve the snow
clearance
process in Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties and in the city of Detroit.
Other
participants include the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional
Transportation
(SMART) and the University of Michigan.

“The ORBTRAC-100 system will help us better coordinate snow removal
activities,
increasing the safety and mobility of our residents while reducing the
overall
costs of winter road maintenance in the Detroit metropolitan area,” said Mr.
Brent Bair, Managing Director of the Road Commission for Oakland County.
“In
addition, the transition to an Internet-based data distribution system will
help
us access and share information like never before.”

The ORBTRAC-100 system was designed and developed by Orbital’s
Transportation
Management Systems (TMS) Division, located in Columbia, Maryland. Using
Global
Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology, the system will track the
location and status of road maintenance vehicles, dispatching snowplows to
the
most critical areas in need of service during major storms, as well as
identifying sections of roadways that have already been serviced. Orbital’s
system will also capture and store data for post-service analysis to assist
in
reducing the overall cost of future operations.

Mr. David L. Mathisen, Vice President and General Manager of Orbital TMS,
said,
“This project serves as a national showcase for snow fighting operations.
The
application of Internet technology represents the culmination of Orbital’s
move
to an Internet-based product for the fleet management market. This system
will
also significantly lower the cost barriers to our customers while enabling
Orbital to open additional markets for our products and services.”

Orbital TMS is the country’s leading supplier of satellite-based AVL systems
for
the expanding Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) market. Orbital’s
AVL
systems are used by 55 transit and state agency customers in the U.S., with
units installed or scheduled to be installed on approximately 23,000
vehicles.
Since 1995, Orbital TMS has received over $250 million in new orders and
today
generates annual revenues of approximately $60 million. Employees number
over
185 at its facility in Columbia, Maryland.

For more information about the ORBTRAC-100 system, contact Mr. Chris Body,
National Sales Director at (443) 259-7328 or log on to
http://infozone.orbital.com/TMS/

Orbital develops and manufactures low-cost space systems, including
satellites,
launch vehicles and sensors and electronics systems. Orbital is also
involved
with satellite-based networks that provide wireless data communications and
high-resolution Earth imagery to customers all around the world.