Space Agency Places Order To Carry Technology Payloads To
Space
In another sign that NASA will begin to rely sooner rather than
later on commercial space ventures to complete its missions, the
agency has signed a deal with Virgin Galactic for up to three
charter flights on its privately-built spacecraft to provide
opportunities for engineers, technologists, and scientific
researchers to conduct experiments in suborbital space. The
agreement calls for NASA to charter one full flight from Virgin
Galactic, and includes options for two additional charter flights.
If all options are exercised, the contract value is $4.5
million.
This arrangement will increase the access researchers currently
have to space. Each mission allows for up to 1300 pounds of
scientific experiments, which could enable up to 600 experimental
payloads per flight. Virgin Galactic will provide a Flight Test
Engineer on every flight to monitor and interact with experiments
as necessary, a capability that has never before been available on
suborbital vehicles. If requested, these experiments can be quickly
accessed after landing, a feature critical to many types of
experiments.
These research flights mark an important milestone for Virgin
Galactic. Although generally thought of as a space tourism company
... having collected more than $58 million in deposits from 455
future tourist astronauts ... providing access to space to
researchers and their experiments is viewed by Virgin Galactic as
both a future mission segment and a significant business
opportunity.
"We are excited to be working with NASA to provide the research
community with this opportunity to carry out experiments in space,"
said George Whitesides, President and CEO of Virgin Galactic. "An
enormous range of disciplines can benefit from access to space, but
historically, such research opportunities have been rare and
expensive. At Virgin Galactic, we are fully dedicated to
revolutionizing access to space, both for tourist astronauts and,
through programs like this, for researchers."
NASA's charter for these flights comes through the agency's
Flight Opportunities Program, managed by NASA's Dryden Flight
Research Center in Edwards, CA. Through this program, NASA has
already arranged the flight of a broad range of innovative
scientific payloads designed by NASA labs, universities, and
private companies across the United States. To date, none of the
experiments flown via the Flight Opportunities program have crossed
the boundary into space.
With the flights secured, NASA will be able to select from a
variety of proposals currently being solicited from the research
community, which has already expressed strong interest. The Flight
Opportunities Program will be responsible for selecting the
payloads to be flown.
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