Sierra Nevada Corporation has won the NASA’s contract to launch cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), joining competitors SpaceX and Orbital ATK, as the USA space agency announced Thursday.
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Orbital ATK plans to use a rebuilt Antares rocket and the company’s Cyngus spacecraft for launches under the new CRS contracts by this summer and Sierra Nevada is developing its Dream Chaser miniature shuttle for the missions, while SpaceX will fly its Dragon spacecraft.
NASA has awarded three cargo contracts to ensure the critical science, research and technology demonstrations that are informing the agency’s journey to Mars are delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) from 2019 through 2024.
NASA split the initial $3.6 billion cargo-flight contract between SpaceX and Orbital in 2008, two years after Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. sent its first rocket aloft.
Orbital valued its share of the new contract at about $1.2 to $1.5 billion.
“There is a general sense that it’s a reasonably big number, over a billion dollars”, Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for Sierra Nevada Space Systems, said of his company’s award in a January 14 interview, but added that uncertainties in when NASA will order missions, and what kinds, kept him from offering a more specific estimate.
Orbital, too, experienced a major setback recently, when its Antares rocket exploded on the launch pad in 2014.
This is great for science experiments that focus on the biological impact of low-gravity, ISS Chief Scientist Julie Robinson said. “There’s a minimum of six missions to the ISS from each of these partners”, explained Kirk Shireman, ISS Program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, adding that NASA is likely to buy more than 18 flights. Despite dramatic launch failures by both SpaceX and OrbitalATK, the success of the program can be seen in today’s announcement and NASA’s decision to fund teams at Boeing and SpaceX working on bringing astronauts to the station. In awarding the company at least six flights to the station, the agency’s leaders “validated our approach, validated our technical ability and validated our company”.
The new contract includes for the first time an insurance requirement for damage to government property during launches.
SNC’s Dream Chaser spacecraft failed to grab a coveted spot in NASA’s new fleet of Commercial Crew vehicles. Dragon and Cygnus will keep flying in the CRS2 missions, but Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser will join them. NASA has relied on Russian Federation for manned launches since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. It can also dock with the station in multiple ways.
Like the space shuttle, the Dream Chaser is meant to return to Earth by landing on a runway like a conventional airplane. The victory helped establish SpaceX as a competitor to United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed rocket venture that has dominated military missions for the past decade.
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It’s no surprise that both incumbents, SpaceX and Orbital, made the cut for the second round of contracts, but space fans were pleasantly surprised to hear NASA granted a third contract to Sierra Nevada Corporation.
