Already, the Wallops facility, about 10 miles south of the Maryland-Virginia line and less than a three-hour drive from Baltimore, is stealing business and jobs from Cape Canaveral.
Supply missions to the space station are in the works. A first-ever moon shot, yet to be publicly announced, is planned for less than three years from now.
Local boosters expect repeat invasions of space enthusiasts, lured by the thunderous spectacle of the largest rockets ever launched on the Atlantic coast outside Florida.
A trigger for all this was NASA's selection of Orbital Sciences Corp., a Washington-area space technology company, for a private-public partnership to ferry cargo to the space station. The supply flights are needed to fill a gap after the U.S. space shuttle program ends next year.
As early as next month, MARS will start constructing a launch pad for Orbital's new Taurus II rocket, designed to carry an unmanned craft into orbit 200 miles above the Earth for a rendezvous with the space station and its human crew. The target date for the first flight is less than two years away, with a total of eight resupply missions planned through 2015.
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat whose patronage has been crucial to the spaceport's development, said the project will generate hundreds of jobs in an area that has suffered from the collapse of housing markets in Ocean City and other nearby towns.
NASA awarded a $1.9 billion federal contract to Orbital in December, and the company is investing an initial $150 million in private funds. The project employs hundreds of people at Orbital's facility in Greenbelt, where its Cygnus cargo craft is being developed, in addition to the new work at Wallops.
"This is aimed at developing Wallops into the first rank of major, international space launch sites to serve both government and commercial customers," said David W. Thompson, chairman of Orbital, currently the spaceport's only customer for rocket launches, including some under contract with the Air Force.
Similar claims, over the past 15 years, turned out to be pie in the sky. But if the spaceport has truly turned a corner, it could transform the country's oldest operating launch site, which NASA shares with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, the independent agency that owns MARS.
