SNC Unveils Dream Chaser Science Mission Mock-Up

Yesterday at the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR) conference in Pasadena, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) unveiled a Science Mission mock-up for the Dream Chaser.
Dubbed the Dream Chaser for Science, or DC4Science, SNC says the “spacecraft is designed to fly independently for short and extended durations to provide customers in such fields as biotech and pharmaceuticals, biology and life science, and material and fluid science with a flexible and evolvable vehicle easily suited for individual mission requirements.”

SNC signed up several partners for the exhibit including SNC’s Teledyne Brown Engineering, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, BioServe Space Technologies and ORBITEC.

“By utilizing Dream Chaser as an orbiting scientific laboratory, our customers can fly tailored missions to meet their distinct needs. Our unique spacecraft offers customers the option for crewed, uncrewed, or telepresence flights, enabling scientists to have complete control of their own payloads – critical for research and development. Customers will maintain scientific intellectual property rights, free from Federal Research Laboratory regulations that govern the International Space Station,” said John Roth, vice president of business development for SNC’s Space Systems. “By allowing customers to be involved from mission definition through mission operation, and providing immediate access to science payloads at a customer-selected landing site, the Dream Chaser offers the scope and flexibility to enhance and enable microgravity science. Our DC4Science mission capability is designed to change the paradigm of orbital microgravity science.”

SNC recently lost out to Boeing and SpaceX in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and are protesting those awards. And while SNC has stated it plans to move forward with the Dream Chaser program it promptly laid off 90 employees.