Company type | Privately Held |
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Industry | Aerospace and space technology |
Founded | April 21, 2021 |
Founders | Eren Ozmen & Fatih Ozmen [ citation needed ] |
Headquarters | Louisville, Colorado, United States [1] |
Number of locations | 6 |
Area served | United States of America |
Key people | Tom Vice (CEO) Janet Kavandi (President) [2] |
Products | Space components, subsystems and systems, Dream Chaser, Orbital Reef |
Number of employees | ~2000 |
Parent | Sierra Nevada Corporation |
Website | SierraSpace.com |
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Sierra Space Corporation, commonly referred to as Sierra Space, is a privately held aerospace and space technologies company headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, [3] with additional facilities in Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and a testing site at the Marshal Space Flight Center in Alabama. [4] [5] The company makes spaceflight hardware for various applications across the industry. It is currently developing the Dream Chaser spaceplane. [6] The spaceplane was selected by NASA to provide services to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Service 2 contract. [7] [8] The company is also in collaboration with Blue Origin to develop components of the Orbital Reef space station. [9]
Sierra Space is a spin-off from Sierra Nevada Corporation that was established as an independent commercial space company in April 2021. [10] It's parent company, the Sierra Nevada Corporation, was a long established aerospace development company which was founded in 1963. Sierra Space operates facilities in 6 states including Colorado, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, and Alabama. [5]
In October 2022, Blue Origin and Sierra Space partnered to jointly develop the world’s first commercially owned and operated space station, Orbital Reef. Orbital Reef will be a “mixed-use business park in space in low Earth orbit (LEO) for commerce, research, and tourism by the end of this decade." [11] Sierra Space and Blue Origin received a $130 million contract to develop the Orbital Reef space station. It is expected to be operational by 2027. Sierra Space expects to announce its first astronaut trainees in 2023. [12]
In April 2023, Sierra Space and ILC Dover announced their partnership for developing of inflatable space station modules and spacesuits. ILC Dover will be the exclusive partner in providing soft goods for Sierra Space’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) modules for commercial space stations. [13] [14]
Sierra Space and the United States Air Force announced a partnership in July 2023. Under a 27-month, $22.6 million contract, Sierra Space will develop a 35,000 lbf thrust upper stage engine, known as the Vortex (VR35K-A). Work for the Vortex involves designing flight-weight engine components through the use of component and integrated breadboard engine test data. [15]
In August 2023, Sierra Space announced that it would be collaborating with BioServe Space Technologies to grow hematopoietic stem cells in microgravity to research undergoing treatment for blood cancer. [16] [17] The same month, the company also partnered with Redwire on a biotech experiment platform that will be installed on Sierra Space's commercial space station LIFE module. [18]
Reports in November 2023 indicated that Sierra Space laid off 165 workers in a realignment of the company. [19]
Sierra Space provides a mix of products and services in three areas: transportation, destinations, and applications. [20]
Initial cargo flights of the Dream Chaser vehicle are planned under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Contract with follow-on cargo, crewed and other missions available for commercial, civil, and national security uses.
On September 8, 2022, Sierra Space announced it signed a CRADA with the United States Transportation Command to develop concepts for using Dream Chaser space planes and Shooting Star cargo modules for “timely global delivery of Department of Defense logistics and personnel." [21] [22]
The first Dream Chaser, DC-101 Tenacity, completed assembly in November 2023. The vehicle will be shipped to NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility for environmental testing. [23] [24]
Products from Sierra Space’s Destinations organization include the Orbital Reef space station (in partnership with Blue Origin) [25] and the LIFE habitat. [26]
Through NASA’s NextSTEP project, Sierra Space completed its successful test in July 2022, which a maximum burst pressure rate of 192 psi. It then completed its second sub-scale ultimate burst pressure test on November 15, 2022 that achieved a 204 psi burst pressure rate. The safety requirement is 182.4 psi. [26] The full-scale LIFE pressure tests began in 2023, and on January 22, 2024 the company announced a successful full scale burst test of the LIFE habitat, exceeding safety margins by 27%. [27]
Applications products include three areas:
In early 2024, Sierra announced their own satellite bus line named Velocity, Horizon, and Titan. [30]
Human spaceflight programs have been conducted, started, or planned by multiple countries and companies. Until the 21st century, human spaceflight programs were sponsored exclusively by governments, through either the military or civilian space agencies. With the launch of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of human spaceflight programs – commercial human spaceflight – arrived. By the end of 2022, three countries and one private company (SpaceX) had successfully launched humans to Earth orbit, and two private companies had launched humans on a suborbital trajectory.
Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P., commonly referred to as Blue Origin is an American aerospace manufacturer, defense contractor, launch service provider and space technologies company headquartered in Kent, Washington, United States. The company makes rocket engines for United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s Vulcan rocket and manufactures their own rockets, spacecraft, satellites, and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The company is the second provider of lunar lander services for NASA's Artemis program and was awarded a $3.4 billion contract. The four rocket engines the company has in production are the BE-3U, BE-3PM, BE-4 and the BE-7.
Dream Chaser is an American reusable lifting-body spaceplane developed by Sierra Space. Originally intended as a crewed vehicle, the Dream Chaser Space System is set to be produced after the Dream Chaser Cargo System cargo variant is operational. The crewed variant is planned to carry up to seven people and cargo to and from low Earth orbit. Sierra plans to manufacture a fleet of the spaceplane.
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) are a series of flights awarded by NASA for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on commercially operated spacecraft. The first CRS contracts were signed in 2008 and awarded $1.6 billion to SpaceX for twelve cargo Dragon and $1.9 billion to Orbital Sciences for eight Cygnus flights, covering deliveries to 2016. The Falcon 9 and Antares rockets were also developed under the CRS program to deliver cargo spacecraft to the ISS.
The Boeing Starliner is a class of partially reusable spacecraft designed to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS) and other low-Earth-orbit destinations. It is manufactured by Boeing, with the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) of NASA as the anchor customer. The spacecraft consists of a reusable crew capsule and an expendable service module.
Development of the Commercial Crew Program began in the second round of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, which was rescoped from a technology development program for human spaceflight to a competitive development program that would produce the spacecraft to be used in the Commercial Crew Program to provide crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station (ISS). To implement the program NASA awarded a series of competitive fixed-price contracts to private vendors starting in 2011. Operational contracts to fly astronauts were awarded in September 2014 to SpaceX and Boeing, and NASA expected each company to complete development and achieve crew rating in 2017. Each company performed an uncrewed orbital test flight in 2019. SpaceX operational flights started in November 2020.
A number of different spacecraft have been used to carry cargo to and from space stations.
Vulcan Centaur is a two-stage-to-orbit, expendable, heavy-lift launch vehicle created and operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA). It is principally designed for the United States Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, which launches satellites for the Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies. It will replace ULA's existing heavy-lift Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets. Vulcan Centaur will also be used for commercial launches, including an order for 38 launches from Kuiper Systems.
The Artemis program is a Moon exploration program that is led by the United States' National Aeronoautics and Space Administration (NASA) and was formally established in 2017 via Space Policy Directive 1. The Artemis program is intended to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 moon mission in 1972. The program's stated long-term goal is to establish a permanent base on the Moon to facilitate human missions to Mars.
Artemis 5 is the fifth planned mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first crewed flight of the Blue Moon lander. The mission will launch four astronauts on a Space Launch System rocket and an Orion to the Lunar Gateway and will be the third lunar landing of the Artemis program. In addition, Artemis V will also deliver two new elements to the Gateway Space Station.
SSC Demo-1, also known as Dream Chaser Demo-1, is the planned first flight of the Sierra Space robotic resupply spacecraft Dream Chaser to the International Space Station (ISS) under the CRS-2 contract with NASA. The demonstration mission is planned for launch in June 2024 on the second flight of the ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket.
The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International Space Station program. American space manufacturer SpaceX began providing service in 2020, using the Crew Dragon spacecraft, and NASA plans to add Boeing when its Boeing Starliner spacecraft becomes operational no earlier than 2025. NASA has contracted for six operational missions from Boeing and fourteen from SpaceX, ensuring sufficient support for ISS through 2030.
Orbital Reef is an under development low Earth orbit (LEO) space station being designed by Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corporation's Sierra Space for commercial space activities and space tourism uses. Blue Origin has referred to it as a "mixed-use business park". The companies released preliminary concepts for the station on 25 October 2021. The station is being designed to support 10 persons in 830 m3 of volume. As of March 2022, the station was projected to be operational by 2027.
Starlab is a planned LEO commercial space station, which is expected to launch no earlier than 2028. It is currently being designed by Starlab Space, a joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus. It is planned to be launched before the decommissioning of the ISS.
The Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) is an inflatable space habitat design currently being developed by Sierra Space. The proposed Orbital Reef commercial space station would include multiple LIFE habitats.
Dream Chaser Tenacity (DC101) is the first Dream Chaser spacecraft expected to fly in space. Manufactured by the Sierra Nevada Corporation, it will first fly to the International Space Station as part of the SNC Demo-1 mission in 2024, under the CRS-2 contract.
The Commercial LEO Destinations program is a public/private partnership program of the NASA, to help facilitate the building of private commercial space stations (CSSs) in low Earth orbit.