NASA has unveiled a number of public-private partnerships and ordered its first crew mission from SpaceX as it continues to strengthen ties with the commercial space industry.
NASA has unveiled a number of public-private partnerships and ordered its first crew mission from SpaceX as it continues to strengthen ties with the commercial space industry.
The space agency picked SpaceX and Boeing as commercial crew winners in September 2014 through a competitive process to provide independent access to space for astronauts, following the end of the Shuttle programme in 2011.
The US$6.8bn contracts were split between US$4.2bn for Boeing and US$2.6bn for SpaceX to end reliance on Russia for manned missions.
NASA’s order follows SpaceX completing a critical design review, which demonstrated the transportation system has reached a sufficient level of design maturity to work towards fabrication, assembly, integration and test activities.
Six months ago a mission with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner was also ordered. NASA said it had not decided which company’s mission would come first.
In a statement, Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s commercial crew programme, said: “It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from US companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the [International Space Station] throughout its lifespan.”
Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, commented: “When Crew Dragon takes NASA astronauts to the space station in 2017, they will be riding in one of the safest, most reliable spacecraft ever flown.”
Astronauts will be sent into orbit via SpaceX’s Falcon9 launch vehicle, which is due to return to flight imminently having been out of action since it suffered its first complete loss in June. Its record before the failure was almost spotless and the industry is confident SpaceX will fix the fault.
Public-Private Partnerships
As the space agency continues to build its relationship with private partners, NASA has signed commercial agreements with nine space companies to help fund the development of new technologies deemed to be at the “tipping point”.
NASA explains that a technology is at the “tipping point” if “an investment in a demonstration of its capabilities would result in a significant advancement of the technology’s maturation, high likelihood of infusion into a commercial space application, and significant improvement in the ability to successfully bring the technology to market”.
The fixed-price contracts cover four areas and range in value from US$1m to US$20m. NASA said the companies would receive the funds in milestone payments and they would have to invest at least 25% of the overall budget, either themselves or from prospective customers.
Orbital ATK, Made in Space and SSL have contracts to focus on various aspects of robotic in-space manufacturing and assembly of spacecraft and space structures; Geo Optics and Freedom Photonics will work on remote sensing applications; Blue Canyon Technologies and Northrop Grumman are developing sensors and actuators; and Tether Unlimited and Aerojet Rocketdyne are engineering propulsion systems for small spacecraft.
After a two-year performance period the companies will present a system-level demonstration of the technology.
NASA has also signed collaborative partnership agreements to aid commercial companies on 13 other projects, two of which are also being worked on by Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne. The other private partners are Generation Orbit Launch Services, Virgin Galactic, UP Aerospace, Intelligent Fiber Optic Systems,T.E.A.M, Boeing, Busek
