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Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser is slowly moving towards its latest goal of performing replenishment missions from the International Space Station (ISS) from 2021. The Cargo variant of the space plane, also equipped an updated "color" system, is now deep building before flying into NASA's Commercial Replenishment Services (CRS2) missions.
The company has also made a rare reference to the crew version of the vehicle, which continues to be an active program – if there is no NASA mission – under a space law agreement (SAA) with the agency.
Dream Chaser will perform at least six missions on the ISS in the 2020s, following NASA's contract award to SNC – as well as SpaceX and Orbital ATK for CRS2 missions.
The addition of Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) to the list of commercial freight replenishment companies will now fly the Dream Chaser mini shuttle into a freight configuration for station replenishment runs.
While Cygnus and Dragon's CRS pillars regularly visit the ISS, program director Kirk Shireman emphasized the need for "dissimilar redundancy" by adding Dream Chaser to the mix, a key selling point previously used by SNC during the transport aspirations of Dream Chaser's crew.
Dream Chaser was making real progress regarding the milestones of the commercial team. The only task on his report was a landing gear failure during a landing test in 2013 at the Dryden Research Center in California.
The test was designed to verify and validate the aerodynamics, control surfaces of flight controls, flight characteristics of approach, flare and landing and landing systems in a low Dream atmosphere. Chaser.
During this test, the space plane flew to the ground and runway to land about a minute after take-off.
However, at the approach of the runway and the deployment of the ordered landing gear, the left landing gear did not deploy completely, which resulted in the vehicle skidding. off runway 22L at Edwards. In particular, the landing gear was donated by a fighter jet and was not an integral part of the Dream Chaser's equipment.
The post-test recovery of Dream Chaser showed that although the craft suffered minor damage, the crew compartment was intact and all of its systems were still operational. Unintentionally, the landing gear failure accidentally demonstrated the ability of Dream Chaser to safely protect its crew / cargo and to survive a "partial landing gear failure scenario" upon landing.
However, this is probably one of the reasons why Dream Chaser lost the last round of financing that finally saw SpaceX's Crew Dragon (Space 2) and Boeing's Starliner (CST-100) win contracts for the missions that will allow American astronauts to find a launching capacity on the domestic market. for the first time since the withdrawal of the Space Shuttle fleet in 2011.
The decision was controversial and led to a claim by SNC regarding the awarding of the Commercial Crew Carrying Capacity (CCtCap) contract after missing a $ 6.8 billion tranche of pot – the lion's share of which was been awarded to Boeing.
In its statement of protest, SNC referred to the Source Selection document, citing serious issues and inconsistencies.
"In 51 years, SNC has never challenged the award of a government contract. However, in the case of the CCtCap price, NASA's source selection statement and report indicate that the source selection process raises serious questions and that there are many inconsistencies. SNC therefore believes that there is no choice but to bring a legal remedy.
"SNC's Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest-priced proposal in the CCtCap contest. SNC's proposal also resulted in comparable Mission Readability scores for the other two proposals. In fact, out of a possible 1,000 points, the highest ranked and lowest ranked offerors were separated by a small number of points and the other factors were also comparable. "
The protest finally failed. Dream Chaser repeated the test in 2017, this time nailing the landing and deployment at Edwards Air Force Base.
Dream Chaser would then obtain a contract with NASA via its cargo variant and reached important milestones before its first launch on an Atlas V, which should take place in early 2021.
When the vehicle takes off, its appearance will be slightly different from that of recent renditions, with SNC deciding to change the design of the Thermal Protection System (TPS) by adding more white tiles to the skin of the boat.
SNC noted that while the change was intended to meet the GST's obvious requirements for re-entry, it also added increased protection against MMOD (MicroMeteoroid and Orbital Debris) threats.
SNC's Dream ChaserĀ® spacecraft is a little different nowadays. We now have more white thermal protection system tiles than black ones. In addition to protecting Dream Chaser against high re-entry temperatures, they will protect against junk impacts in space traveling at speeds above 20,000 mph. pic.twitter.com/rAk3DpJzTV
– Sierra Nevada Corporation (@SierraNevCorp) April 7, 2019
From a paperwork perspective, Dream Chaser recently completed milestone 5 of the NASA Integrated Review (IR5), a key verification of SNC's performance in various ground and flight operations. Cargo loading operations are part of the ground operations tests.
"Our Dream Chaser team continues to achieve milestones as we approach the trajectory of this spacecraft," said Fatih Ozmen, owner and CEO of SNC as IR5. "The orbital spacecraft is under construction and this step shows that the vehicle continues to pass key exams and is making great progress."
SNC then released rare photos of the vehicle in a video – especially the pressure vessel – under construction at Lockheed Martin's famous Skunk factory.
The video showed the legacy, with obvious changes, between the crew and cargo versions of the Dream Chaser, the latter allowing a larger load capacity, which will be his main job at CRS2.
In particular, the Dream Chaser descent will be directly transferred from the ISS to a runway, such as the Kennedy Space Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), which will speed up the processing of critical experiments. This is a key element of "dissimilar redundancy" compared to other vehicles.
A quick comparison between the cargo version and the crewed version, the question now is where the crewed version is. #Dream Catcher pic.twitter.com/IS7Zp1Cyi5
– DutchSpace (@DutchSpace) April 22, 2019
It is worth noting that in response to the aforementioned tweet regarding the status of the Dream Chaser crew, SNC confirmed that the work was still active on the human-rated vehicle, which is still technically under contract with the NASA, though via what is called an unfunded space law. Agreement (ASA).
"Even though we may not be showing it publicly, we still continue to work on crew design under an agreement with NASA," he said. noted SNC in a response from Twitter. "In fact, we regularly meet the commercial crew program and explain the milestones under this agreement."
This note becomes more interesting when we take into account the problems encountered during the development of the Crew Dragon – in particular the anomaly observed during the tests of the SuperDraco thruster several days ago – and that Starliner will probably see the two vehicles delayed launch of human beings, potentially in 2020.
Depending on the volume of work done on the Dream Chaser crew, NASA could – in theory – provide funds to accelerate the work on the Dream Chaser crew vehicle and create a backup option in case of additional problems with the Dream Chaser crew. two main commercial Crew Vehicles.
Despite the problems with Crew Dragon and Starliner, NASA is far more likely to continue buying more Soyuz flights to be able to launch US astronauts into the ISS and ensure an uninterrupted US presence on the orbital outpost. .
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