[10-19-07 – Satellite Today] NASA terminated its agreement with Rocketplane Kistler under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Project (COTS) and is reopening bidding for the rest of funding, NASA announced Oct. 18.

Rocketplane Kistler missed a fourth milestone in the project in May, and in early September, NASA officially notified the company of its failure to perform and decided to terminate the contract after concluding that further efforts were not in the agency’s best interest.

NASA has $174.7 million to offer in the new competition, and the announcement for a new round of industry proposals will be available Oct. 22. U.S. commercial providers will have 30 days to respond.

NASA chose Rocketplane Kistler to receive the funding in 2006, along with Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) which announced Oct. 17 it had completed the critical design review for its first Falcon 9/Dragon system.

As part of the COTS competition, SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 with a cargo-carrying Dragon spacecraft on a series of three demonstration missions to the International Space Station. SpaceX intends to demonstrate its launch, maneuvering, berthing and return abilities by 2009, the company said.