Lockheed Martin will help Sierra Nevada Corp. human-rate its Dream Chaser reusable human spacecraft under a subcontract announced Jan. 30, drawing on its experience building the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle for NASA.

Sierra Nevada’s lifting-body vehicle, which is partially funded by NASA’s Commercial Crew Development seed-money effort, is due for its first drop test in the next month to six weeks, company officials said in a press conference at the company’s Louisville, Colo., facility.

Lockheed Martin will use its Space Operations Simulation Laboratory in nearby Littleton, Colo., to test full-scale mockups of the Dream Chaser in space station docking and other maneuvers, and build structure for the first orbital test vehicle with its equipment at the government-owned Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

“Lockheed has joined our Dream Chaser team as an exclusive partner to help us with the certification — how do we get this vehicle really fit to fly safely, to pass all the requirements, to do the things that are necessary to fly human beings to orbit on a system that’s supposed to be something that flies frequently,” said Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada’s Space Systems unit. “We’re going to combine the knowledge that Lockheed Martin has done through their work to date on the Orion program and around their entire space portfolio, as well as their aircraft portfolio, with what we’re doing.”

Sierra Nevada is working under a $212.5 million Space Act Agreement to develop the Dream Chaser, which is designed to launch on an Atlas V and glide to a runway landing after re-entry using heat-shield technology derived from the space shuttle and — with the new partnership — unmanned re-entry vehicles that Lockheed Martin developed for space science missions.

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