Louisville, Colo. – June 6, 2012 (SNC PR) – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announces the successful completion of its Dream Chaser®Space System’s (DCSS) Preliminary Design Review (PDR). This review was the third major system-level review for the DCSS as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) Program.
NC’s PDR included a detailed review of all major elements of its orbital flight program including the Dream Chaser orbital crew vehicle, the Atlas V launch vehicle, and Dream Chaser Mission and Ground Systems. The entire design, architecture and performance of the Dream Chaser Space System was reviewed and thoroughly evaluated by NASA and the DCSS partner companies and determined that the SNC preliminary design for DCSS is complete.
“The successful completion of this full system PDR established that the Dream Chaser has a credible system design which is now approved to proceed towards integrated system testing.” said John Curry, Director of Dream Chaser Systems Engineering, Integration, Test, and Operations. John joined SNC after 25 years at NASA where he served as a Flight Director for the Space Shuttle and Space Station Programs, and managed integration and test the for NASA’s Orion and Constellation Programs.
The Program’s successful PDR came during the same week when the Dream Chaser vehicle began its flight test program, illustrating SNC’s approach of concurrent design and development. On May 29, the Dream Chaser Program completed the successful first flight of Dream Chaser full scale vehicle. The flight met all the pre-established flight test goals and is a significant step towards preparing the vehicle for an autonomous Approach and Landing Test (ALT) scheduled for later this summer.
“As Commercial Crew Program partners meet these critical milestones, we are moving in the right direction in our combined effort to advance commercial capabilities that could eventually transport NASA astronauts,” NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango said.
“We would like to thank our 12 industrial partners, 7 NASA Centers and 3 universities from over 20 states who helped us achieve two major program milestones this week. This is the 17th overall milestone completed by SNC during NASA’s CCDev1 & 2 Programs and, with the completion of PDR and the beginning of our vehicle’s flight test program, the Dream Chaser Program has now entered the next phase of development. This will lead to the creation of safe and reliable U.S.-built low Earth orbit crew transportation system for our nation,” said Mark Sirangelo, Corporate Vice President and head of SNC’s Space Systems.
For information about Sierra Nevada Corporation, including images and video of the Dream Chaser Vehicle’s Captive Carry Test, visit: http://www.SNCSpace.com
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