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Mr. Thompson is Orbital's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the company.
Before co-founding Orbital in 1982 Mr. Thompson was special assistant to the president of Hughes Aircraft Company's Missile Systems Group and was a project manager and engineer on advanced rocket engines at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. As a college student he worked on the first Mars landing missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and on Space Shuttle projects at NASA's Langley Research Center and Johnson Space Center.
As a result of his work at Orbital Mr. Thompson was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George Herbert Walker Bush was honored as Virginia's Industrialist of the Year and was named High-Technology Entrepreneur of the Year. In addition he received the National Air and Space Museum Trophy by the Smithsonian Institution was selected as Satellite Executive of the Year by Via Satellite Magazine and was presented with the World Technology Award for Space by The Economist Magazine.
Mr. Thompson is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics the American Astronautical Society and the Royal Aeronautical Society and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics. He received a bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology a master's degree in aeronautics from California Institute of Technology and a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
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