In April 2021 the Dream Chaser division of the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) was spun-off, creating the fully independent Sierra Space Corporation (SSC), which assumed full oversight over the Dream Chaser program. The company developed a new reusable spacecraft to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station (ISS), based on decades of lifting body programs. Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program, the company designed Dream Chaser with industrial partner Lockheed Martin.
The company also designed the accompanying Shooting Star cargo module with subcontractor Applied Composites.[3] At the end of mission, the Shooting Star will destructively reenter the atmosphere and the Dream Chaser will land at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility.
Spacecraft
The Dream Chaser Cargo System will fly cargo resupply missions to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services-2 program. This system features the Shooting Star, an expendable cargo module with solar panels, and the Dream Chaser, a reusable lifting body capable of returning 1,750 kg (3,860 lb) of pressurized cargo to Earth while undergoing maximum re-entry forces of 1.5 g.[4][5]
The vehicle to be used in SSC Demo-1 is named Tenacity.[10][11] The Shooting Star carries pressurized and unpressurized cargo, and serves as the power supply for the Dream Chaser.[5] The Shooting Star will have a cargo capacity of 4,536 kg (10,000 lb). Its design is similar to the Exoliner cargo container shown in Lockheed Martin's Jupiter proposal for NASA's CRS-2.
Mission
SSC Demo-1 is the Dream Chaser demonstration mission under the Commercial Resupply Services-2 (CRS-2) contract with NASA. Production and integration of the Dream Chaser spacecraft is performed in Texas, Colorado, and Florida. The Dream Chaser is mated with the Shooting Star at the launch site, and mission operations are conducted from control centers in Colorado and Houston, Texas. Sierra Nevada selected ULA's Vulcan Centaur as its launch vehicle for this Demo-1 mission and the six contracted NASA CRS-2 missions.[12][13][14]
See also
Orbital-D1 – First Cygnus demonstration flight to dock to ISS
^VC4L designates that this is a Vulcan Centaur with four solid rocket boosters and a long payload fairing.
References
^ abcGarcia, Mark (15 October 2024). "Crew-8 Awaits Splashdown; Expedition 72 Stays Focused on Science". NASA. Retrieved 16 October 2024. The first flight of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser to the International Space Station is now scheduled for no earlier than May 2025 [...] will carry cargo to the orbiting laboratory and stay on board for approximately 45 days on its first mission.
^"Vulcan". United Launch Alliance. 2020. Retrieved 19 January 2022. Peregrine will fly on a VC2S, Dream Chaser will fly on a VC4L.
^H. Phillips, Edward (15 July 1991). "Langley Refines Design, Begins Human Factors Tests of Personnel Launch System". Aviation Week & Space Technology. p. 52. ...The HL-20's baseline design has evolved from manned lifting bodies flown for the Defense Dept, during the 1960s and owes much of its overall layout to the Martin X-24A...
^R. Dale, Reed (1997). "Wingless Flight The Lifting Body Story"(PDF). NASA. p. 180. Archived from the original(PDF) on 18 December 2014. ... The NASA lifting-body program has been well documented in about 100 technical reports on the program's 222 flights and 20,000 hours of wind-tunnel tests. Many of these publications are unclassified. The Soviet Union purchased copies of these reports from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., then designed its own lifting body. In 1982, the Soviets flight-tested an unpiloted, 10-foot-long, subscale version of their lifting body, the BOR-4, including a maneuvering re-entry over the Indian Ocean from space orbit. The flight test of the BOR-4 closely resembled that of our PRIME (X-23) vehicle in 1966... This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^R. Asker, James (24 September 1990). "NASA Design for Manned Spacecraft. Draws on Soviet Subscale Spaceplane". Aviation Week & Space Technology. p. 28. ... A mock-up of the proposed "space taxi", called the HL-20 Personnel Launch System, closely resembles a Soviet subscale spaceplane flown on four orbital missions in the 1980s... However, Piland, chief of the space systems division at the Langley Research Center, was quick to point out the Soviet test vehicle seems to have evolved from U. S. lifting-body configurations flown from 1966 to 1975 — such as Northrop's HL-10, M2-F2 and M2-F3 and Martin's X-24A and X-24B...
^Wallace, Lance E. (1996). "Flights of Discovery: 50 Years at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center"(PDF). NASA. p. 72. Archived from the original(PDF) on 17 February 2015. ... The lifting-body program came to an official end in 1975. Yet like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the concept has appeared several times since then in proposed NASA spacecraft. When the Langley Research Center revealed its HL-20 design for an emergency crew return vehicle or small mini-Shuttle in 1990, the shape was remarkably similar to the HL-10 and X-24A designs... This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
