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The first vessel in a planned line, Tenacity, was completed at the company’s factory in Louisville, Colorado, in November and then shipped to NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.
Sierra Space’s shuttle-like Dream Chaser has been put through its paces in a powerful NASA vibration facility that mimics conditions during launch and re-entry into the atmosphere, officials said Thursday ahead of its planned first flight. to the ISS this year.
The first spaceplane in a planned line, Tenacity, was completed at the company’s factory in Louisville, Colorado, in November and then shipped to NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.
There, he was exposed to the Mechanical Vibration Facility, the most powerful spacecraft vibration system in the world, NASA said.
It will then be placed in a huge buried vacuum chamber where it will experience the ultra-low and high temperatures of space, as well as low ambient pressure.
“We’re really excited to be entering orbital operations for NASA this year. It’s a year where we change the way we connect Earth and space,” Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice told reporters in a press event where the spacecraft was presented in “launch.” configuration”, attached to its Shooting Star cargo module.
Dream Chaser bears a strong resemblance to the space shuttle, NASA’s iconic spacecraft that was decommissioned in 2011.
But it is much smaller, flies autonomously, has a revamped propulsion system based on clean-burning hydrogen peroxide and is designed to be reused up to 15 times.
Sierra Space, formerly Sierra Nevada Corporation, won a contract in 2016 to execute NASA resupply missions to the International Space Station.
The first flight will deliver cargo to the orbital complex at an unspecified date this year, attached to the top of a new United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket, which made its first flight in January.
Unlike SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, a gumdrop-shaped capsule that floats toward the ocean by parachute, Dream Chaser could, in theory, land on a landing strip anywhere in the world, a feature marketed as a sale for customers who buy services.
Future versions will be designed to carry crew.
NASA’s goal is to seed a private economy in low-Earth orbit, allowing the space agency to focus on more ambitious missions to the Moon and Mars that lack commercial incentives.
Other Sierra Space efforts include building a commercial space station called Orbital Reef.