Astro Aerospace designs satellite components at its relatively small facility in Oxnard, located next to NOAA’s regional National Weather Service station (and a large Procter & Gamble toilet paper factory). Astro was founded in 1958, and worked on satellite components for many NASA missions. It built the Synthetic Aperture Radar for Seasat, the first satellite designed for the remote sensing of the world’s oceans, deployed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in 1978. Astro is owned by Northrop Grumman.