NASA has awarded a pair of contracts
worth $3.5 billion through 2016 to two private aerospace firms seeking to haul
vital supplies to and from the International Space Station, the space agency
announced late Tuesday.
The Hawthorne, Calif.-based firm Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, Va.,
beat a third competitor for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contracts with
their proposals to privately develop and launch spacecraft capable to
delivering cargo to the space station and returning supplies back to Earth.
"This is a contract that we really
need to keep space station flying, and to service space station," NASA's space
operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters in a teleconference. "I think
it's exciting we're doing this from a commercial side."
NASA's Commercial
Resupply Services plan calls for SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to haul 20
tons of cargo to the space station through 2016. NASA has agreed to pay $1.6
billion for 12 flights of SpaceX's planned Dragon spacecraft and their Falcon 9
boosters. The agency has also doled out $1.9 billion to Orbital for eight
flights of its Cygnus spacecraft.
SpaceX plans to launch its Dragon
spacecraft atop a
Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while
Orbital Sciences is developing its Cygnus vehicle to fly atop its Taurus 2
booster from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern coast of Virginia.
Bridging the gap
NASA has been seeking commercial
U.S. cargo delivery services to the space station to reduce reliance
on its international partners during the anticipated five-year gap between
the 2010 retirement of its aging space shuttles and the first
operational flights of their successor, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.
None of
the rockets proposed under the Commercial Resupply Services program have yet
flown. However, SpaceX announced Monday that it expects to have the first
Falcon 9 erected on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral by the end of the year to
support a spring launch for a U.S. government customer the company says it is not
at liberty to name.
Orbital,
meanwhile, recently reached an agreement with NASA's Stennis Space Center to
begin testing the Taurus 2's AJ-26 engines at the Mississippi field center by
late 2009 in preparation for the rocket's initial launch in 2010.
Russia's unmanned Progress cargo
ships have long been the workhorse for automated station cargo deliveries, with
Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle making its successful debut last year.
Japan's first H-2 Transfer Vehicle is slated to make its first test flight to
the station in 2009.
Commercial cargo launches vital
Gerstenmaier said it is absolutely
vital that SpaceX and Orbital come through with their cargo launch and return
pledges to support the space station's full, six-person crews in the future.
Ultimately, the companies are expected to provide between 40 percent and 70
percent of NASA's space station cargo each year.
"We don't have a backup per se in
terms of cargo resupply," Gerstenmaier said. "The majority of our cargo is
going to be coming from these cargo providers...we are looking for them to be
successful."
Only one
other company was in the final running for the pair of Commercial Resupply
Services contracts just awarded: Chicago-based
PlanetSpace, a start-up company that had teamed with Alliant Techsystems
(ATK) and Boeing and Lockheed Martin on a solid-fueled rocket ATK proposed to
design and build.
Gerstenmaier
cited the likelihood of rocket availability and the superior management
structures and technical abilities demonstrated by the SpaceX and Orbital
proposals as the basis for selection.
Both SpaceX and Orbital were
developing their spacecraft using seed money from NASA's separate Commercial
Orbital Transportation System program, which awarded up to $278 million to
SpaceX and $171 million to Orbital.
"We really need these guys to
deliver," Gerstenmaier said. "We're committing to them to go deliver."
advertisement
