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Dream Chaser mini-shuttle coming to Kennedy Space Center

James Dean
FLORIDA TODAY

A space shuttle will launch again from the Space Coast, albeit a much smaller version of the ones that called Kennedy Space Center home for decades.

NASA on Thursday awarded one of three new contracts to resupply the International Space Station to Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp., whose Dream Chaser mini-shuttle will be prepared at KSC for unmanned launches and likely landings on the spaceport’s former shuttle runway.

Artist rendering of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser cargo vehicle in orbit.

The awards gave life to the winged, reusable Dream Chaser, which in 2014 lost a bid for a contract to fly astronauts. The space agency is also retaining the services of incumbent cargo haulers SpaceX and Orbital ATK for missions planned between 2019 and 2024.

“NASA clearly has recognized the value of adding a lifting body, runway landing vehicle to their fleet,” said Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems. “We’re very proud to be carrying on the torch of the space shuttle in that regard.”

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and the Dream Chaser will launch from Florida.

Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft might, too, with NASA choosing from options that would fly from either Florida or Virginia depending on mission needs.

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The second round of Commercial Resupply Services contracts, known as CRS2, have a potential combined maximum value of $14 billion, but NASA said the actual total would be far less than that.

NASA didn't disclose the individual award amounts, but Orbital ATK said its deal was worth between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion. NASA will make public its evaluations of each bid after debriefing the competitors, which once also included Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The latter two were known to have been eliminated earlier in the deliberations, so the question Thursday was whether NASA would award two or three contracts.

Each company is guaranteed six missions. NASA said comparing their costs would be difficult since each vehicle can perform different types of missions.

“I’m really excited about the suite of capabilities that we have,” said Kirk Shireman, NASA’s ISS program manager. “It’s really going to allow us to greatly increase our flexibility and utilization of ISS.”

NASA anticipates flying about four cargo missions each year starting in late 2019.

The Dream Chaser’s addition means two spacecraft — the other is SpaceX’s Dragon — now will be able to return station cargo to the ground. Orbital’s Cygnus burns up in the atmosphere.

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Artist rendering of a Sierra Nevada Corp. Dream Chaser cargo spacecraft docked to the International Space Station.

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Dream Chaser missions would be expected to land on KSC’s three-mile Shuttle Landing Facility and be prepared for flight in the center's Armstrong Operations and Checkout building, alongside the Orion capsule NASA is developing for human exploration missions.

Sierra Nevada hasn’t determined how many local jobs the Dream Chaser work might mean or and how soon they might arrive.

“While we don’t know time or numbers yet, the elements of this which were in our proposal are pretty serious for Florida,” said Sirangelo.

About 30 feet long with a 23-foot wingspan, a Dream Chaser will fit inside payload fairings atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The design is known as a “lifting body” because it derives lift from its entire triangular base, not just from wings.

Sierra Nevada Corp. has called the Dream Chaser a “little brother” of the shuttle orbiters that NASA retired in 2011, which measured 122 feet in length and 78 feet from one wing tip to the other. The design is based on the HL-20 concept NASA once considered as a station crew rescue vehicle, but it has not yet flown in space.

“We have been working now for 10 years to try to keep lifting bodies alive in spaceflight, and with the ups and downs that we’ve had, including the loss of the crew program, this was we think a particularly poignant and sweet moment for everybody on our team,” said Sirangelo. “While we were the underdogs in lot of people’s minds, we so much believed in the vehicle that I think that passion finally came through.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.​

NASA set to award ISS cargo contracts