Sierra Nevada Completes Partnership Agreement with Dream Chaser Free Flight
Dream Chaser in a captive carry flight over the Mojave. (Credit: Sierra Nevada Corporation
By Rebecca Regan
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has successfully completed one of its partnership agreements with NASA, through which the company continued development of its Dream Chaser spacecraft. The Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement culminated with a review of the data collected during the company’s first free-flight test of the Dream Chaser spacecraft. SNC is one of NASA’s commercial partners working to develop the next generation of U.S. spacecraft and rockets capable of transporting humans to and from low-Earth orbit from American soil.
SNC’s flight test at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center and Edwards Air Force Base in Edwards, Calif., occurred Oct. 26. The Dream Chaser spacecraft collected the data necessary to characterize its aerodynamic and flight control capabilities, despite an anomaly during landing and rollout, meeting all of the milestone criteria outlined in the agreement.
“A spacecraft that lands on runways provides unique benefits for commercial spaceflight, but also presents unique development challenges,” said Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of Commercial Spaceflight Development. “This flight of the Dream Chaser’s full-scale atmospheric flight test vehicle considerably improves confidence in the Dream Chaser’s design and Sierra Nevada Corporation’s ability to overcome engineering development challenges.”
The company partnered with NASA for two-and-a-half years under the CCDev2 agreement, working to design and develop its Dream Chaser spacecraft. Engineers performed rigorous wind tunnel tests of the spacecraft alone and integrated to a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. SNC began testing and selecting materials for the spacecraft’s thermal protection system, fired Dream Chaser’s reaction control system thrusters and performed multiple captive-carry flights to assess the vehicle’s performance in-flight. The company also constructed avionics and flight control integration labs, and a cockpit-based flight simulator at its facility in Louisville, Colo.
“SNC is pleased to begin flight testing and to have successfully completed the CCDev2 agreement,” said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of SNC’s Space Systems. “Having the Dream Chaser flight exceed our expectations on its first autonomous flight was an extraordinary accomplishment for SNC, its team of industry, government and university partners and all those who worked on the NASA heritage HL-20.”
SNC, in collaboration with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, continues to make strides in refining the company’s fully integrated space transportation system through the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative. SNC also is working to establish plans for certifying its system for crewed missions to the International Space Station through its Certification Products Contract (CPC) with the agency.
All of NASA’s industry partners, including SNC, continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.
4 responses to “Sierra Nevada Completes Partnership Agreement with Dream Chaser Free Flight”
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Man, I don’t know. If that flight met the requirements, then NASA’s requirements needed to include on last line, the text of which would have read something like:
Demonstrate a successful landing (controlled touchdown and rollout to a full stop)
I’m really pulling for Dream Chaser, actually. I guess anyone can relate to feeling that that drop test was not completely satisfactory. If it was possible to do, I would have liked to have seen Sierra Nevada patch that Dream Chaser up and re-fly it on their own initiative, rather than waiting on NASA’s decision as to whether it technically met the letter of the written requirements.
Oh well, if they get funded for the third round (and doing a complete demo as outlined above sure would have created momentum for that), this will all be water under the bridge as they’ll next enter into manned flight demos. If they _don’t_ get funded for a third round, they can thank that “landing” and their declaring of it to be good enough.
I had always wondered that myself. I mean, why built a test unit with systems (ie. landing gear) that are going to be different from what you are using on the real Dream Chaser later on. You want to test everything right? Including the landing gear it seems to me!
“Yeah, we got this set of wheels on discount… but don’t worry, we’ll do better with the real one later on!”
Ow well, can’t really blame SNC for going this way though. Their goal is met, NASA’s money is in the pocket and they can not continue to work on their little ship. Wether they make it to the next CCP round or not!
As far as I know, the milestone was to verify all the theoretically calculated flight properties by doing a real free flight and check if the numbers are what is to be expected. It was neither to demonstrate landing, nor to test a specific set of landing gear.
SNC used an “engineering test model” to do this and not an actual, fully finalized Dream Chaser.
I really do not like how they keep the result of the landing gear malfunction under wraps and would like them to be more open about it, but if NASA sets requirements for milestones of a development effort, and those are met, then they have earned the money associated with that milestone.
Keep in mind we are only talking about a specific milestone of the CCDev2 effort, and NOT about NASAs requirements for buying transportation services from them.
Quote: “As far as I know, the milestone was to verify all the theoretically calculated flight properties by doing a real free flight and check if the numbers are what is to be expected. It was neither to demonstrate landing, nor to test a specific set of landing gear.”
– Yeah, sure. But it crashed.
It’s not like it had no gear put on it at all and they intentionally nosed the test article right into the desert and threw it away. It was designed to land — on that flight.
In fact, they plan to use this very same vehicle for piloted drop tests next. The idea that it can land in fine condition on a runway is, along with low re entry g’s and cross range capability, it’s very reason for existence.
The main point — they’re fighting for their very financial existence in a tough funding environment. Tumbling off the runway on one demo drop test wasn’t the ideal statement to make to their financial backers (Congress).