On September 14, GRVTY, Inc. applied to Fairfax County for a sign permit at 2551 Dulles View Drive in Herndon. Tenants file for sign permits when they want their name on the outside of a building. GRVTY has not announced a Herndon office.
The filing does not show how much space the company has leased or when employees will move in. GRVTY, the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority and JLL, which markets the building, did not respond to our requests for comment. We will update this post if they do.
GRVTY calls itself “a national security company delivering effects in space, spectrum, and cyber.” Arlington Capital Partners, a private equity firm, formed the company in March 2025. In February, the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority announced that GRVTY would invest $8 million in a new headquarters at 8270 Greensboro Drive in Tysons. The plan covers more than 22,000 square feet and 200 new jobs. Virginia added an $800,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. At that point GRVTY employed nearly 1,000 people. FFXnow reported that the company started out with primary offices in Arlington, Dulles, Chantilly and Springfield.
GRVTY joins a long list of space companies that have opened or expanded offices along the Dulles Toll Road. In February, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said the county holds “more than 150 companies supporting space-related missions, and over half of them choosing to expand or relocate here in just the past few years.”
Dulles View traded for about a third of its 2013 price before GRVTY’s filing
Dulles View is a pair of eight-story office buildings at 2551 and 2553 Dulles View Drive. Together they hold roughly 355,000 square feet, and they sit about a mile from the Innovation Center station on the Silver Line. The address is Herndon, 20171, outside the town limits.
Gemini Rosemont bought the complex for $100 million in 2013. After the owner defaulted, the lender took the buildings back at auction. In December 2025, a JBG Smith venture bought Dulles View for $31.5 million, or about $89 a square foot, compared with roughly $281 a square foot in 2013. JLL’s listing for the north building, the one GRVTY named in its filing, shows 2,310 to 57,528 square feet available.
The federal agencies that buy and fly national security satellites work in Chantilly, Springfield and the Pentagon
- The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates the country’s spy satellites, has its headquarters in Chantilly.
- The Space Development Agency keeps its headquarters in the Pentagon, but says it performs a majority of its work in Chantilly. The agency is building a large network of military satellites in low Earth orbit, a few hundred miles up.
- Space Systems Command opened a Chantilly hub for working with commercial companies in 2023.
- The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research center for military space programs, moved its headquarters from El Segundo, California, to Chantilly in 2024 and cited proximity to decision makers.
- The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a major buyer of satellite imagery, runs its headquarters campus at Fort Belvoir North in Springfield.
The Space Force asked for $71.3 billion for fiscal 2027, according to an analysis by the Aerospace Corporation’s policy center. That total includes $12.1 billion the administration proposes to fund through reconciliation, a budget process that needs only a simple majority in the Senate. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Golden Dome, the proposed missile defense shield, would cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, with space-based interceptors accounting for about $720 billion of that.
Reston holds Blue Origin’s engineering office and a growing group of satellite companies
Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos’s rocket company set up a 33,000-square-foot office it calls a Center of Excellence at 2001 Edmund Halley Drive in 2022, in one of the Reston Crossing buildings near the Reston Town Center Metro station. FFXnow reported that the office supports the New Glenn launch system, advanced development work and new space infrastructure products.
Scout Space. Nearby, at 2002 Edmund Halley Drive, Scout Space builds sensors and autonomy software that let satellites watch other objects in orbit, a field called space domain awareness. Blue Origin is one of its customers. In June the company announced a 2,650-square-foot optical sensor facility in Merrifield with 31 new jobs, and it keeps its headquarters in Reston.
Umbra. The company builds synthetic aperture radar satellites, which bounce radar off the ground to produce images through clouds and at night. In February the company committed $6.75 million to a 20,000-square-foot Reston office with more than 100 jobs, backed by a $500,000 state grant.
SpiderOak. The cybersecurity company, whose OrbitSecure software for space systems has run on the International Space Station, moved its headquarters to 11911 Freedom Drive at Reston Town Center in 2023.
Anduril. The defense technology company pulled build-out permits at One Freedom Square this summer. In April the Space Force picked Anduril as one of 12 companies to build prototype space-based interceptors for Golden Dome.
Five government contractors with space work keep their headquarters in Reston
Each of these companies runs its corporate headquarters from Reston and has a space line of business.
- SAIC, at 12010 Sunset Hills Road, won a $55 million contract in 2025 to provide systems engineering and integration support for the Space Development Agency’s third generation of satellites.
- CACI, at 12021 Sunset Hills Road, builds laser communications terminals that let satellites pass data to each other. The company says it has more than 50 of those terminals in low Earth orbit.
- Leidos, on Presidents Street, holds a $476 million NASA contract supporting cargo missions to the International Space Station and the Artemis program.
- General Dynamics, at 11011 Sunset Hills Road, has a Mission Systems unit that builds ground systems for the Space Development Agency’s satellites.
- Peraton, which lists space among its mission areas, moved its headquarters to 1875 Explorer Street in Reston and keeps a large campus at 2200 Woodland Pointe Avenue in Herndon, which Comstock bought in April.
Two more headquarters are on the way to Reston Station. Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the companies developing a space-based interceptor prototype for the Space Force, is moving its global headquarters from McLean to The Row at Reston Station, with an opening planned for fall 2027. Amentum plans to open its new 45,000-square-foot global headquarters at 1900 Reston Metro Plaza in early 2027.
Herndon is home to two publicly traded satellite companies
HawkEye 360. The company flies a constellation of more than 30 satellites that detect and locate radio signals from ships, radars and other transmitters. Its headquarters at 450 Springpark Place in Herndon spans three buildings and 38,354 square feet, and houses its satellite operations center and satellite assembly, according to the company’s filing with the SEC. The company had 395 full-time employees at the end of 2025. In May it priced its initial public offering at $26 a share, raising about $416 million.
BlackSky. BlackSky sells satellite imagery and analysis to government and commercial customers. The company leases 17,119 square feet for its headquarters at 2411 Dulles Corner Park, on a lease that runs to 2036, and reported 321 employees at the end of 2025 in its annual report. It builds its satellites in the Seattle area.
Kratos’s space division, which builds ground systems for satellite operators, is at 13530 Dulles Technology Drive. Vantor, the satellite imagery company formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, lists a Herndon office.
Satellites get built at Dulles, and satellite operators keep headquarters in Tysons and Vienna
Northrop Grumman’s 135,000-square-foot facility in Dulles has delivered more than 130 spacecraft, including the Cygnus cargo ships that resupply the International Space Station. Optimum Technologies expanded its satellite manufacturing plant in Loudoun County in 2024, and Redwire opened a Chantilly office for national security programs the same year.
Closer to the Beltway, Iridium, which operates a global satellite phone network, planned a 55,000-square-foot Tysons headquarters with 117 new jobs and moved in this March. In June, Rocket Lab agreed to buy Iridium in a deal valued at about $8 billion, expected to close in mid-2027. Spire Global, which collects weather and aircraft data from small satellites, lists its principal executive offices at 8000 Towers Crescent Drive in Vienna.
California, Colorado and Florida build and launch most American spacecraft
Payload, a space industry newsletter, has described Seattle, Denver and Austin as rivals for the title “Silicon Valley of space”. Measured by manufacturing and launches, other states lead:
- California holds nearly one-third of the country’s space systems companies and more aerospace engineers than any other state, according to Claremont McKenna’s Rose Institute.
- Colorado counts 55,000 direct aerospace jobs and more than 2,000 companies, and claims the most aerospace employment per capita in the country.
- Florida’s Space Coast hosted 109 launches in 2025, the first year it passed 100.
- York Space Systems builds 42 of the Space Development Agency’s first batch of data-relay satellites in the Denver area, even though most of the agency’s work happens in Chantilly.
Northern Virginia holds the agencies that decide which satellites to buy and many of the companies that operate those satellites or sell their data. Fairfax County’s economic development authority calls the Washington region “the epicenter of U.S. space policy, strategy, and leadership.” A Colorado Chamber Foundation report found that the state’s aerospace job growth has flattened, and a Colorado Space Coalition study with McKinsey found Virginia, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas expanding faster, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
The Washington region lost more than 100,000 jobs over a year while space employers expanded
The Washington metro area lost 103,900 jobs, or 3.1 percent, between January 2025 and January 2026, the largest decline of any metro area the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured. The Booz Allen, Umbra, GRVTY, Amentum and Scout Space announcements and Anduril’s Reston permits all came during that stretch or after it.
Respondents to the ClearanceJobs 2026 compensation survey who live in Virginia reported average total compensation of $138,748. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put Fairfax County’s average weekly wage at $2,451 in the first quarter of 2026, which works out to roughly $127,000 a year.
Classified work cannot be done from home, so the office address sets the commute
Classified work happens inside accredited secure rooms called SCIFs, short for sensitive compartmented information facilities. Employees cannot do that work from home, so jobs built around it require working on site. For a buyer relocating for a job at one of these companies, the commute to a specific address carries more weight than it does for someone with a hybrid schedule.
Reston and Herndon sit between most of the employers named above. Four Silver Line stations serve Reston and Herndon: Wiehle-Reston East, Reston Town Center, Herndon and Innovation Center. Route 28 runs south from the Dulles Toll Road past Dulles Airport to Chantilly, where the NRO, the Aerospace Corporation and Redwire work.
For buyers relocating for one of these jobs:
- Map the commute to the office address. A Herndon mailing address covers the Town of Herndon, Dulles Corner and Dulles View near Route 28. A North Reston home sits a short drive from HawkEye 360 on Springpark Place and a much longer one from the NRO in Chantilly.
- Drive it at rush hour before you write an offer. Weekday morning traffic on the Toll Road and Route 28 looks nothing like a Saturday afternoon showing.
- Check the nearest Silver Line station. Innovation Center station sits about a mile from Dulles View, and Reston Town Center station sits near Blue Origin and Scout Space on Edmund Halley Drive.
If you are relocating for a job along the corridor, reach out. We can line up homes by commute time to your office and walk you through the Reston and Herndon neighborhoods that fit. Our guide to living in Reston is a good place to start.
See something missing or wrong? Email us at [email protected] and we will check it and update the post.
