Sierra Space marked a historic achievement with the completion of its first Dream Chaser space plane.
The Colorado-based company announced on Thursday (Nov. 2) that construction has wrapped up on its first Dream Chaser vehicle, named “Tenacity.” The space plane is about to be shipped to NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio for environmental testing in the approaching weeks.
“Today we’ve got arrived at a profound milestone in each our company’s journey and our industry’s future — one which has been years within the making and is formed by audacious dreaming and tenacious doing,” Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice said in a company statement on Thursday. “The Dream Chaser shouldn’t be only a product; it is a testament to human spirit, determination and the relentless pursuit of what lies beyond.”
Sierra Space holds a NASA contract to launch robotic resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) with Dream Chaser. Tenacity will likely be the primary of the corporate’s space planes to fly to the orbiting lab, and it could accomplish that soon: The vehicle could launch on a test flight to the orbiting lab as early as April 2024.
That mission will lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida aboard United Launch Alliance’s recent Vulcan Centaur rocket and can conclude with a landing at NASA’s historic Shuttle Landing Facility, which is a component of KSC.
The Dream Chaser’s design is a mix of aesthetics and functionality, not to say endurance, in line with Sierra Space. The craft must repeatedly withstand reentry temperatures over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius) while remaining cool to the touch minutes after landing, which is not any small engineering feat.
The corporate also says that Dream Chaser’s autonomous flight system is designed for no less than 15 space missions. The vehicle’s sustainable propulsion and oxidizer-fuel system should help mitigate the environmental cost of its operations as well.
Tenacity’s initial run will feature seven ISS cargo missions, if all goes in line with plan. Like SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, Dream Chaser can return experiments and other hardware to Earth from the orbiting lab. The opposite two freighters in operation today — Northop Grumman’s Cygnus and Russia’s Progress vehicle — cannot do this; they burn up upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.
Robotic resupply missions may very well be just the start for Dream Chaser. In the longer term, Sierra Space also plans to launch people aboard the vehicle, which looks like a miniature version of NASA’s space shuttle.