Orbital Sciences Antares rocket awaits its test launch at Wallops Island, Virginia.
While Earthdwellers cast their eyes to Mars this week and waited for news from NASA's Curiosity, lots of action took place closer to home, where the commercial space market has seen progress from every direction. We've rounded up a short summary of what happened back on the home planet.
Chasing dreams
Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft team held its Program Implementation Plan Review in Colorado this week, the first milestone in its CCiCap list. CCiCap is phase 3 of NASA's Commercial Crew vehicle development program, intended to foster commercial rides to the International Space Station for NASA astronauts. Passing that first milestone was worth $30M to Sierra Nevada. It advances the company toward the first drop test and free flight of the Dream Chaser Engineering Test Article, a version of the craft specifically built for testing, in November.
According to NASA's Dream Chaser technical manager, Cheryl McPhillips, Sierra Nevada has two safety review milestones coming as part of its CCiCap program, then an integrated system baseline review, then ultimately a critical design review toward the end of the program. Sierra Nevada also has optional milestones, but they were redacted in the information released thus far.
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