Sierra Space has passed another important benchmark – one that did not mean the inflation (and then popping) space station module models. According to the startup January 29 UpdateThe Retro-Futuristic Space District of the company, Dream Chaser, has recently demonstrated the opportunity to process critical payloads intended for the international space station. In addition to the ISS, the Dream Chaser Cargo System (DCCS) from Sierra Space can also operate future orbital installations in comparable capacities.
Milestones such as the joint test 10b of Sierra Space are needed to treat Dream Chaser’s ability to treat specialized payloads such as vital scientific research “, Pablo Gonzalez, vice -president of Crew and Cargo Transportation Systems, in a statement earlier this week.
Last month’s test required coordination at multiple locations. While Dream Chaser himself was in the Kennedy Space Center of NASA in Florida, control rooms also participated in the exercise in Sierra Space in Louisville, Co and the Marshall SpaceFlight Center in Huntsville, Al. During the test, Dream Chaser demonstrated the possibility to exchange data between multiple payloads in the cabin under pressure, air cabinet options and the need to consistently maintain in-cabin power.
Joint Test 10B focused on three payloads, all of which may be planned for on board DCC-1, the first official ISS mission of Dream Chaser who currently launched no earlier than May. The first load, a cryogenic preservation system designed by researchers from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, will store scientific monsters at temperatures everywhere between -95 and 10 degrees Celsius (-130 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit). The driven Ascent Utility Locker (Paul) from Sierra Space Collaborator, Space Tango, is intended to contain a few Cubelab experiments that require electricity during Dream Chaser’s Ascent to the ISS. Finally, NASA’s Single Stowage Locker is a standard compartments system that is often used to transport experiments and other materials to and from the ISS.
[ Related: Watch a giant, inflatable space station prototype explode during its intentional ‘ultimate burst’ ]
The design of Dream Chaser is noticeable from the current reusable loading systems such as the SpaceX Dragon or Northrop Grumman Cygnus capsules. Instead of parachute -backing systems, Dream Chaser looks much more like a NASA spacecraft and returns to earth through a landing lane landing. The aesthetic callbacks are also not an accident. When New Atlas Dream Chaser was noticed on January 30 and is largely based on the HL-20-Personnel System System, a space aircraft concept developed for the first time by NASA in the 1980s. The HL-20 itself comes from the X-20 Dyna-Soar space aircraft of the US Air Force that was originally intended for missions in the sixties.
An earlier iteration of Dream Chaser was originally in the race for NASA’s astronaut transport contracts, but lost to SpaceX and Boeing. Sierra Space has since reduced the space aircraft, removed the passenger section and installed a replaceable loading module that can transport 11,000 LBS oppressive load, along with 1,100 pounds non -printed load in a track. During the return flights, the Dream Chaser Cargo System (DCCS) can also handle 3,860 pound freight.
The first transport mission of Dream Chaser is at least a few months, but as Gonzalez has explained this week, tests like this “brings us one step closer to the launch.”
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