Sierra Space

Sierra Space is an American commercial space company formed in April 2021 as a spin-out of Sierra Nevada Corporation, which remains its parent. It is headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, and its work spans expandable space station modules, spacecraft systems and the vehicle that brings it into this catalog.

Dream Chaser

Dream Chaser is a reusable lifting-body spaceplane that launches vertically on a conventional rocket and returns to land horizontally on a runway. The cargo variant flies uncrewed and was selected by NASA for Commercial Resupply Services 2 missions to the International Space Station, carrying pressurised and unpressurised cargo up and bringing results back down. The first vehicle, DC-101 Tenacity, completed assembly in November 2023 and was then moved to NASA's Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility for environmental testing ahead of flight.

Other work

Beyond the NASA resupply contract, Sierra Space has said it intends to fly Dream Chaser on commercial, civil and national security missions. In September 2022 the company signed a cooperative research agreement with U.S. Transportation Command to study using the spaceplane for Department of Defense logistics and personnel delivery. A crewed version has been described by the company but the uncrewed cargo configuration is the one currently built and tested.