Dream Chaser will once again await its first flight into space.
Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft will not launch as scheduled this summer aboard United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket. That means ULA plans to continue with two important national security preparatory launches that must be completed by the end of 2024 to meet the needs of the U.S. space force.
ULA plans to target its second Vulcan Centaur launch, a military certification flight called Cert-2, as early as September. Cert-2 will fly with inert payloads as well as experiments and demonstrations, CEO Tory Bruno announced today (June 26). Then, by the end of 2024, there will be a third preparatory launch for the US Space Force.
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As for Dream Chaser: “We are working with Sierra Space to put Dream Chaser back on the manifest when they are ready to go,” Bruno told reporters in a teleconference. “We waited as long as possible for the Dream Chaser,” he added, “because we really wanted to fly them.”
A Sierra Space representative told Space.com that they may still be ready to fly the Dream Chaser by the end of the year. “We continue to make excellent progress on Dream Chaser and the space plane is on track to fly by the end of 2024,” a representative told Space.com via email.
“As a defense technology expert, we understand how important ULA’s Cert-2 mission is to national security criticality and our launch partner’s plan. We are working closely with ULA to determine the next available launch date,” the statement added.
ULA’s first Vulcan launch successfully carried Astrobotic Technology’s private Peregrine lunar lander into space, which never reached its destination due to an unrelated spacecraft anomaly. Based on that work, Bruno said, the rocket is otherwise ready to continue trying to launch lucrative missions for the space force.
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“It was a perfect fight and target, smooth as silk,” Bruno said of the first mission, adding that it gave Space Force confidence that they would move forward quickly.
ULA and Space Force are also confident they can handle a second military training launch by the end of 2024 because the Peregrine launch “was so very clean,” he said. While the methane tank was very slightly underperforming, additional insulation is in the works on the tank to prevent these issues again on Cert-2.
Cert-2 will measure fuel leakage from Centaur to see if the defect persists and will send undisclosed experiments into orbit to help us understand how to extend the duration [Centaur] upper stage and what the practical limits might be in the future,” said Bruno.
ULA will then have a busy 2025 if all goes according to plan. “We’ll fly 20 times if all the satellites come up,” he said, referring to the Atlas V and Vulcan launches. ULA is spending “in the high tens of millions” on two 2024 national security preparation launches in anticipation of paying off in new contracts, Bruno noted.
It’s been a long journey for Dream Chaser’s first trip into space. Based on NASA and Soviet-era space shuttle designs, it was the first participant in NASA’s commercial crew program (albeit under previous companies SpaceDev and then Sierra Nevada Corp.)
Dream Chaser was not selected for commercial crew after SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner were selected in the last round in 2014; SNC later filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which was dropped after the office found no problems with the rating.
But Sierra Space’s collaboration with NASA isn’t over. In 2016, the spacecraft was selected under the NAS’ Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract to provide at least six flights to the ISS. (SpaceX and Orbital ATK, now part of Northrop Grumman, have also received funding for their Dragon and Cygnus vehicles.)
Development of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser continues, including ground testing and autonomous gliding flights in Earth’s atmosphere. Earlier this year, engineers also conducted vibration and pressure tests at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio.