On June 15, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced its intention to partner with seven U.S. aerospace corporations so as to advance human spaceflight and the industrial low-Earth orbit economy.
The agency stated in a press release that these partnerships — done through the second Collaborations for Business Space Capabilities-2 initiative (CCSC-2) together with unfunded Space Act Agreements — are designed to ultimately profit industrial space-related efforts through NASA contributions. It will include the sharing of technical expertise, data, assessments, and other technologies.
With NASA oversight, these industrial projects could have a greater opportunity to fulfill future needs from the private and government sectors, within the name of fostering a sturdy and sustainable low-Earth orbit ecosystem.
In choosing proposals, NASA evaluated their relevance towards achieving the agency’s goals and the general feasibility of every company’s business and technical approach. Each company will even put forth its own development costs into their respective projects.
The seven corporations chosen through the CCSC-2 program are as follows: Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space Corporation, SpaceX, Special Aerospace Services, ThinkOrbital Inc., and Vast Space LLC.
Blue Origin’s proposal highlights the event of an integrated industrial space transportation capability, intended to make sure inexpensive and high-frequency U.S. access to low Earth orbit for each cargo and crew missions.
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Blue Origin’s manufacturing and processing facilities at Exploration Park. (Credit: Max Evans for NSF/L2)
This likely pertains to using orbital-class launch systems equivalent to the heavy-lift Recent Glenn — currently in production and set to conduct its maiden launch no sooner than 2024 — and orbital spacecraft like Boeing’s Starliner and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane, amongst others.
As with their suborbital Recent Shepard rocket, Blue Origin is designing Recent Glenn to be crew-rated, enabling it to support human spaceflight missions. The corporate has previously stated that space tourism flights on Recent Glenn would even be offered, with Recent Shepard astronauts getting first access.
Past work on orbital subsystems once saw Blue Origin developing their very own crew-capable spacecraft, with the biconic Space Vehicle competing under NASA’s Business Crew Development (CCDev) initiative. It’s unknown whether any similar projects are currently within the works.
Recent Glenn’s pace of development has picked up in recent months, with imagery captured by NSF photographers showing visible progress at Blue Origin’s Exploration Park campus at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation’s collaboration with NASA involves the corporate’s development and use of the Persistent Platform concept — seemingly a brand new addition to their list of technologies.
The Persistent Platform will probably be designed to offer autonomous and robotic capabilities for industrial science research and in-space manufacturing.
The concept envisions using Northrop Grumman’s existing Cygnus cargo transportation spacecraft as a part of a free-flying mission, with additional photovoltaic solar panels and a satellite bus attached to facilitate these added capabilities.
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Artistic render of Northrop Grumman’s Persistent Platform attached to a Cygnus spacecraft. (Credit: Northrop Grumman)
The satellite bus appears to be based on one other existing technology developed by the corporate within the ESPAStar platform, which is able to accommodating several combos of hosted and separable payloads on a single bus.
Based on Northrop Grumman, the ESPAStar system is principally optimized for geostationary orbit missions, but is adaptable for missions to low-Earth orbit.
The system has been proven on multiple launches, equivalent to STP-3 in December 2021, USSF-44 in November 2022, and USSF-67 in January 2023, respectively. These spacecraft were flown under the Long Duration Propulsive ESPA (LDPE) name, with future missions taking up the designation ROOSTER (Rapid On-Orbit Space Technology Evaluation Ring).
Other details on the Persistent Platform, including additional features and development timelines, have yet to be publicized by Northrop Grumman.
Sierra Space Corporation will partner with NASA within the evolution of the corporate’s industrial low-Earth orbit architecture, including next-generation space transportation, in-space infrastructure, and expandable facilities tailored to host a human presence.
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Artistic render of a Dream Chaser spaceplane preparing to dock to a LIFE habitat module. (Credit: Sierra Space)
This includes variations of the corporate’s Dream Chaser spaceplane and the Orbital Reef project, announced in 2021 as a commercially developed, owned, and operated space station in cooperation with Blue Origin, Boeing, Redwire Space, and other partners.
Considered one of Sierra’s major contributions to Orbital Reef is the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module — an inflatable habitat module akin to Bigelow Aerospace’s Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), currently under NASA ownership on the International Space Station (ISS).
LIFE is designed with a high-strength Vectran fabric weave, and might inflate on-orbit to a diameter of 27 feet to create a living and dealing area for crews of as much as twelve astronauts. The module also incorporates a closed-loop life support system and an Astro Garden to facilitate plant growth.
The Dream Chaser spacecraft — currently in development — will support each crew and cargo missions to Orbital Reef, with the uprated DC-200 variant getting used primarily for crew transport. The DC-200 is roughly 40% larger than the present DC-100 cargo-only version of Dream Chaser, and is a winged spaceplane reasonably than a lifting body. The primary launch is tentatively scheduled for no sooner than 2026.
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Artistic render of a Dream Chaser DC-200 spacecraft in Earth orbit. (Credit: Sierra Space)
The primary flight of Dream Chaser to the ISS, featuring the DC-101 Tenacity vehicle and the Shooting Star cargo module, is currently set to happen no sooner than 2024 atop a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket. Construction of the DC-102 spacecraft (yet to be named) can be underway.
SpaceX’s proposal chosen by NASA sees the utilization of an integrated low-Earth orbit architecture, featuring the corporate’s super heavy-lift Starship vehicle as a point of interest.
This architecture includes Starship as a method of transportation and an in-space LEO destination element supported by the Super Heavy booster, the Dragon spacecraft, and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite web constellation, together with other items equivalent to crew and cargo transport and communications.
Having Starship function a destination could imply that SpaceX plans to make use of it as a LEO outpost, given its large internal volume and the long run ability to facilitate long-duration missions. Nonetheless, the specifics of this proposal have yet to be revealed.
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Starship takes flight from Starbase, Texas. (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)
This could be an added capability for the Starship vehicle, already built to host large-scale satellite and crew launches, point-to-point transportation flights on Earth, space tourism (equivalent to the dearMoon mission), lunar landings under NASA’s Artemis program, and far more.
SpaceX conducted its first integrated test flight of Starship on April 20 this 12 months, and is currently working on improvements to the Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas ahead of future launches. The corporate plans on using prototype vehicles Ship 25 and Super Heavy Booster 9 for the second flight test, set to occur sometime later this 12 months.
Once Starship reaches orbit, SpaceX will transition operations toward satellite launches featuring Starlink payloads and other demonstration missions, equivalent to a cryogenic propellant transfer demonstration in Earth orbit.
SpaceX’s proposal also highlights the usage of Dragon, with a selected deal with the spacecraft’s near-term evolution. The present version of Dragon is adaptable for each crew and cargo missions, either to low-Earth orbit destinations equivalent to the ISS or as solo flights like Inspiration4.
The Starlink system can be mentioned in SpaceX’s proposal, with an emphasis on providing communications and ground support.
Special Aerospace Services (SAS), based in Boulder, Colorado, is a tactical engineering and advanced manufacturing business. Founded in 2007, the corporate has served as a contractor for NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for over a decade.
Their latest partnership with NASA will see SAS design a robotic in-space servicing technology, often known as the Autonomous Maneuvering Unit (AMU). This, together with an Astronaut Assist-AMU, will enable the safer assembly, servicing, retrieval, and inspection of in-space low-Earth orbit systems.
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A Special Aerospace Services engineer testing the Autonomous Maneuvering Unit. (Credit: Special Aerospace Services)
The AMU will feature its own propellant system, similar in design to the U.S. Air Force’s Astronaut Maneuvering Unit — planned to be tested throughout the Gemini program but never used — and the NASA Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) that was used on three Space Shuttle missions in 1984.
In the fashionable era of spaceflight, NASA astronauts utilize a smaller technique of self-propulsion during spacewalks with the SAFER system (Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue), though it is barely meant to be utilized in case of emergency. The newer AMU could serve in the same capability during EVAs outside industrial space stations, when not in autonomous use.
ThinkOrbital Inc. of Lafayette, Colorado, is an area infrastructure startup company founded in early 2021 with the goal of developing large-scale, multi-mission platforms for in-space manufacturing and debris removal.
Their collaboration with NASA will deal with the event of the corporate’s ThinkPlatforms and CONTESA (Construction Technologies for Space Applications) — self-assembling, single-launch, large-scale orbital spacecraft that may facilitate various activities in low-Earth orbit.
ThinkOrbital’s roadmap lists several variations of their ThinkPlatform, which incorporates a spherical habitat module that will be assembled in space with a robotic arm and operate either as a component of a bigger industrial space station or docked to a different vehicle like SpaceX’s Starship, as shown in various renders.
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Artistic render of ThinkOrbital’s ThinkPlatform in low-Earth orbit. (Credit: ThinkOrbital)
These platforms can have several use cases, including servicing, refueling/propellant storage, private space tourism, and industrial science research.
The CONTESA project features welding, cutting, inspection, and additive manufacturing technologies, meant to help in large-scale in-space fabrication of materials.
In September 2022, ThinkOrbital — together with Redwire Space and the Arizona State University — won a research contract award totaling $250,000 under SpaceWERX’s Orbital Prime initiative for in-space service assembly and manufacturing (ISAM) capabilities, and recently received an extra $250,000 grant from the Colorado state government to speed up progress.
The corporate plans to design, construct, test, and launch two in-space additive manufacturing demonstration missions inside 14 months.
Vast Space LLC will collaborate with NASA on technologies and operations required to develop and operate the corporate’s microgravity and artificial gravity space stations. This includes the Haven-1 outpost and Vast-1, the primary crewed mission to the station.
Haven-1 — recently announced in May 2023 and currently targeting an August 2025 launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket — will initially act as an independent industrial space station, with the flexibility to host a crew of 4 astronauts for as much as 30 days and featuring an internal pressurized volume of 70 cubic meters.
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Artistic render of the Vast-1 mission arriving to dock on the Haven-1 station. (Credit: Vast Space)
Once launched, Haven-1 will probably be later used to host the crew of Vast-1, set to reach in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The mission will feature a combination of personal individuals and agency-affiliated astronauts, and can support additional research and in-space manufacturing opportunities.
Haven-1 will function a microgravity environment in low-Earth orbit, with the added ability to simulate lunar gravity by slowly spinning the spacecraft. Such experiments will probably be conducted by the crew of Vast-1.
The corporate has stated its long-term goal is to create a large-scale, multi-module artificial gravity station at 100 meters in length, consisting of seven modules launched by SpaceX Starship vehicles and assembled on-orbit.