A decades-old rocket factory in Redmond, Wash., is due to be rebranded with a time-honored name: Rocketdyne.

If all goes according to plan, the facility will become part of a joint venture created under the terms of an $845 million deal involving L3Harris Technologies and AE Industrial Partners.

L3Harris took control of the Redmond facility in 2023 when it acquired Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion. Now L3Harris plans to sell a majority stake in its Space Propulsion and Power Systems business to AE Industrial, while retaining 40% ownership of the newly created Rocketdyne venture. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions.

L3Harris will retain full ownership of the business line focusing on RS-25 rocket engines. Those engines, derived from space shuttle technology and used on NASA’s Space Launch System, are primarily manufactured in California.

For decades, the Redmond facility has built propulsion systems for space vehicles ranging from NASA’s space shuttles to Mars rovers to the Artemis moon program. Redmond-built thrusters are due to be used on NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which will send four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon and back.

The facility traces its lineage back to Rocket Research Co., which was founded by former Boeing engineers in 1960 in Seattle. Rocket Research relocated to the 80-acre Redmond campus in 1968 and has gone through a string of name changes and acquisitions since then.

According to a 2022 presentation for the Redmond Historical Society by Jack DeBoer, a program manager at the site, the Redmond facility has been managed through the years by Rockor, Olin Aerospace, Primex Technologies, General Dynamics, Aerojet, GenCorp and Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Because of its heritage, the Redmond site could be regarded as the Seattle area’s oldest continuously operated facility exclusively dedicated to rocket production — as opposed to Boeing, which has played a leading role in aviation as well as space technology.

Today, more than 400 employees work at the Redmond campus. The sign at the entrance currently reads simply “L3Harris.”

The Rocketdyne name has its own tangled history: It was founded in California in 1955 as a division of North American Aviation and built the F-1 engines that were used on Saturn V rockets during the Apollo era.

It became part of Rockwell International in 1967 and was acquired in turn by Boeing in 1996 and by United Technologies in 2005. In 2013, Rocketdyne was sold to GenCorp, which merged it with Aerojet to form Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Microsoft’s decision to renew a large swath of office space in Redmond is emerging as a key stabilizing force for the Eastside office market near Seattle.

That’s one takeaway from a new report by commercial real estate firm Broderick Group, which highlighted Microsoft’s renewal for 396,228 square feet at Redmond Town Center, just north of the company’s main headquarters campus. The deal was one of the largest office transactions on the Eastside in 2025.

Microsoft confirmed the new lease when contacted by GeekWire. The tech giant also confirmed a report from the Seattle Times that it is reoccupying space at the Millennium Corporate Park location in Redmond, where it has about 480,000 square feet. The company had previously offered that space for sublease.

While Microsoft was responsible for some of the region’s largest space givebacks last year — including a 750,000-square-foot reduction at The Bravern in Bellevue — the latest commitments suggest the company is holding onto its remaining footprint as it begins enforcing a new return-to-office policy. This past September the company announced that it would implement a three-day in-office requirement, starting across the Seattle region in February before expanding to other U.S. locations and eventually globally.

Both Microsoft and Amazon — and their respective in-office policies — appear to be playing an outsized role in determining how quickly the Eastside’s office recovery takes shape, even as overall vacancy reached 21.8% in the fourth quarter.

Amazon, which last year increased its own in-office policy from three to five days a week, continues building out major projects in Bellevue, including Bellevue 600, The Artise, and West Main. The company employs more than 12,000 people in Bellevue as part of what it calls its “Puget Sound headquarters” which also includes its Seattle campus. Amazon cut 14,000 workers in broad layoffs in October, with 2,303 corporate employees in Washington state.

A growing roster of technology companies has also signed new or expanded leases on the Eastside in recent years, including OpenAI, Snap, Anduril, Shopify, Snowflake, Walmart, and Chewy.

“Notably, a growing number of new-to-market entrants … are choosing the Eastside over Seattle, drawn by Bellevue’s modern office inventory, business friendly climate and skilled technology workforce,” Broderick’s report noted.

Despite the positive signals, the firm cautioned that vacancy is unlikely to fall sharply in the near term. Downtown Bellevue’s vacancy rate stood at 25.4% at the end of the year.

The report also noted that more than 1% of the Eastside’s office inventory has been removed through office-to-residential conversions.