On Tuesday of this week, the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems, a Partner with NASA for its Commercial Crew Transport Program (CCP), successfully completed a “captive carry test” of its full-scale Dream Chaser orbital crew vehicle. The Dream Chaser will eventually be used to transport as many as 7 NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), and will initially be launched atop an Atlas V rocket.
The shape of the vehicle is very similar to early test vehicles during the early stage designs for the Space Shuttle. In fact, of all the commercial vehicles under development by NASA partners in the program, the Dream Chaser is the only spacecraft of a winged design and expected to land on a conventional runway.
The successful test on Tuesday marks a new milestone for the company, bringing it one step closer to deploying a successful crew transport system. “This is a very positive success for the Dream Chaser team and their innovative approach,” NASA CCP Program Manager Ed Mango said. “I applaud and encourage the designers and engineers to continue their efforts in meeting the objectives of the rest of their CCDev2 milestones.”
According to NASA, the Dream Chaser flight vehicle was carried under an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter during the one hour test flight in an effort to assess the vehicle’s aerodynamic flight performance. The data gathered from this test will pave the way for further flight testing which will include approach and landing tests scheduled for later this year.
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“The successful captive carry flight test of the Dream Chaser full scale flight vehicle marks the beginning of SNC’s flight test program, a program that could culminate in crewed missions to the International Space Station for NASA,” said Steve Lindsey, former NASA astronaut and head of Dream Chaser’s flight operations for SNC.
So far the nation’s space agency has been pleased with the success of its commercial partner program, including the recent successful mission by SpaceX and their Dragon spacecraft to and from the ISS. To date, all of NASA’s, continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.