The first Dream Chaser underwent multiple tests last year at NASA’s Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio in preparation for its inaugural launch to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Glenn Research Center/Jordan Salkin
The debut of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplanes has been eagerly anticipated by professionals and space fans alike nostalgic for the days of space shuttle runway landings. But a NASA official’s recent comments are calling into question the likelihood of that first flight occurring this year.
Originally scheduled to be launched on a cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station in late 2020, the first Dream Chaser — dubbed Tenacity — is now slated to launch in “2025,” according to NASA’s published launch schedule. A ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket will send the spaceplane, along with its expendable, unpressurized Shooting Star cargo module, toward the ISS with up to 5,443 kilograms (12,000 pounds) of cargo. After departing the station, jettisoning Shooting Star to burn up and making the searing journey back through the atmosphere, Tenacity will glide down to a runway landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Despite the 2025 launch date still appearing on NASA’s schedule, the agency’s Bill Spetch, ISS operations integration manager, omitted any mention of Dream Chaser during a July 10 press conference. He was providing a rundown of activities anticipated through November, including the first visit by Japan’s new HTV-X cargo spacecraft.
Asked about the omission, Spetch said, “When you’re coming up to the first flight of a new vehicle, it takes some time. I don’t have an update for you on when our planned launch date is for Dream Chaser. We continue to work very closely with Sierra Space on the development of that vehicle.”
In an emailed statement, NASA told me that Sierra “is continuing to work through assembly, test, verification, and certification” of Tenacity “as the company evaluates a flight readiness date.”
During a Friday press conference following the launch of the Crew-11 mission, ISS Program Manager Dana Weigel said that software certification is among the remaining tasks to be completed before a new launch target can be set: “We still have some of our integrated safety reviews to do, and we’re in the process with updating both of our schedules to try to understand where does that really put us. And so Sierra’s working on that, and so I need to wait and just get information back from them to see where they think some of that work lines out.”
As to the overall development schedule, she noted that “I think everyone really underestimates what it takes to put together a complex spacecraft. I mean, you’re watching it right now with Boeing Starliner, you’re watching it with Sierra, but if we remind ourselves on average it takes eight to 10 years for a spacecraft to get ready and fly.”
In an emailed statement, Sierra pointed to the “complex and meticulous process” to develop the Dream Chaser design, along with the results of earlier testing, as factors in lengthening the timeline.
Following the bulk of its assembly in Louisville, Colorado, Tenacity underwent testing last year at NASA’s Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. In a statement, Sierra said “Dream Chaser’s development timeline reflects the extensive testing campaigns necessary to validate every aspect of its design. For instance, thermal vacuum and launch vibration testing at NASA Armstrong revealed areas which we’ve systematically addressed to resolve technical risks.”
The company also cited “unique engineering challenges,” including the spacecraft’s “green propulsion system and sophisticated thermal protection system. These efforts have required careful attention to detail and significant refinement of processes to ensure safety, reliability, and performance.”
Some of the remaining checklist items before the first flight include electromagnetic interference testing, acoustic testing, a test of hardware-software integration throughout the mission phases, a runway tow test of landing systems and hot firing of thrusters, according to the company.
Dream Chaser’s origins
The last craft to follow the flight path slated for Dream Chaser was the space shuttle Atlantis in 2011, under the command of astronaut Chris Ferguson. That final landing closed the space shuttle’s chapter in spaceflight history but opened up opportunities for companies to take over ferrying cargo and crew with privately owned vehicles under the Commercial Crew and Commercial Resupply Services programs. Those have included Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo capsules and SpaceX’s Dragon crew and cargo variants.
Boeing has struggled to get its Starliner crew capsule design approved for routine astronaut flights. Dream Chaser is slated to be the last of the cohort to make the attempt.
Though Sierra originally bid for the crew contracts as well, and the company’s website still refers to the long-term plan of developing a crewed variant to service the proposed Orbital Reef commercial space station, for now, the company is focusing on its cargo flights. NASA in 2016 selected Sierra, along with Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, for contracts worth a combined $14 billion to conduct cargo flights. Dream Chaser may perform up to seven missions under the contract.
Spaceplanes versus capsules
Ever since Dream Chaser began receiving NASA contracts, veterans of the space shuttle era assumed building a new winged vehicle would prove harder than a capsule, said Wayne Hale, a former space shuttle program director and past member of the NASA Advisory Council.
For one thing, spaceplanes are comparatively “very complicated to get into orbit and out of orbit” because they require more complex flight control hardware and software. Additionally, “the structure is more complex” than the gumdrop-shaped capsules designed by Boeing, Northrop and SpaceX, “with parts that stick out into the airstream and get higher physical loading than any part of a capsule,” Hale said.
Despite these challenges, in his view, the benefits of a winged vehicle — “more places it can land, lower forces on the crew and cargo, more easily accessed after landing” — outweigh the complexities, he said.
Even if Sierra completes only one ISS flight, Hale said he believes that would be enough to “set [it] up as a cargo delivery vehicle for whatever follow-on commercial space stations there might be,” Hale said.
The press to get Dream Chaser to the space station comes as NASA and its international partners are working toward a 2030 retirement for ISS, with a deorbiting planned for no later than early 2031.
And the station could see lighter traffic in its final years: The Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget released in May proposed a $508 million budget cut to station operations, “reducing the space station’s crew size and onboard research” — along with crew and cargo flights — to prepare for the station’s retirement “and its replacement by commercial space stations.”
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NASA and Sierra declined to discuss in detail about how the budget request might impact future cargo flights. “That top level funding identified in the Technical Supplement is all we have to share at this time,” NASA told me by email.
Once the Sierra employees wrap up their work on Tenacity, they’re slated to return to Colorado to “ramp up production” on the second Dream Chaser, named Reverence, according to a company spokesperson. How many flights Tenacity and Reverence complete depends on “how fast the team can reprocess Tenacity stacked up against the buildout of Reverence.”
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