NASA Announces New Round Of Commercial ISS Resupply Mission Contracts

NASA is expected to announce this afternoon which companies, including Northern Nevada’s Sierra Nevada Corp., will win contracts to ship cargo to the International Space Station.

“By utilizing the flexibility of our Cygnus spacecraft, combined with a mixed fleet of launch vehicles, Orbital ATK is providing NASA a complete portfolio of mission options to fulfill their cargo delivery needs”, said Culbertson.

“Few would have imagined back in 2010 when President Barack Obama pledged that NASA would work ‘with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable, ‘ that less than six years later we’d be able to say commercial carriers have transported 35,000 pounds of space cargo (and counting!) to the International Space Station – or that we’d be so firmly on track to return launches of American astronauts to the ISS from American soil on American commercial carriers”. Dream Chaser resembles a mini-space shuttle, and one of its selling points is the ability to land on an airport runway and return scientific samples to their researchers quickly. NASA’s guarantee to Sierra Nevada of six supply station missions means a flow of federal money that will help get Dream Chaser completed and ready to service the station.

“This is exciting news for NASA, Sierra Nevada, and Huntsville”, Mayor Tommy Battle said.

Obtaining a share of cargo missions would represent a dramatic vote of confidence by NASA in Sierra Nevada’s space plane-whose appearance resembles the retired space shuttle-which is created to launch on top of a rocket.

Present at the conference were, Ellen Ochoa, the director of Johnson Space Center, Sam Scimemi, ISS Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, Kirk Shireman, ISS program manager at JSC and Julie Robinson, ISS chief scientist at Johnson.

The Dream Chaser program — underway for 10 years — is based in Louisville, Colorado. In addition to the three winners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin also offered to transport cargo to and from the ISS. The space agency opted for a passenger version of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and a new offering from Boeing called the CST-100 Starliner.

The biggest difference between the CRS1 and CRS2 contracts is that NASA chose to award three companies this round instead of two.

“The total cost paid will depend on which mission types are ordered”, Shireman said.

Members of the NASA Spaceflight forum predicted SpaceX and Orbital ATK would be awarded the contracts. These flights will begin in 2019 and run through 2024.