Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft will soon be shipped to California to begin its second phase of free-flight testing in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Dream Chaser is a lifting body design that utilizes short winglets to fly back to Earth in a manner akin to NASA’s space shuttles. The same full-scale Dream Chaser engineering test article that performed the first free-flight at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California in October 2013 has been rebuilt and upgraded to perform the second set of tests. The evaluation will culminate with the test article carried high above the runways at Edwards Air Force Base, adjacent to Armstrong.
Without anyone aboard, the Dream Chaser will be released to glide on its own and land. The test, expected at the end of 2016, will evaluate the Dream Chaser’s systems as outlined in the companies’ Commercial Crew Integrated Capabilities Space Act Agreement with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The information gathered during the test will be used to advance the Dream Chaser cargo vehicle tailored to carry equipment, experiments and supplies to the International Space Station, under the agency’s second cargo resupply services contract.
“These tests are significant for us in multiple ways: building on our previous flight test, completing a significant milestone under our CCP agreement, as well as gathering crucial data that will help complete the design of the vehicle being built for our CRS-2 contract,” said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of SNC’s Space Systems business area.