Sierra Nevada Corp’s Dream Chaser. Photo: NASA

[Via Satellite 04-17-2015] Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have signed a new agreement to work together on the Dream Chaser space vehicle. The company and the space agency will extend a previous one-year Dream Chaser technical agreement signed in 2013 out to 2017.

The partnership continues developmental work and the identification of new technologies to advance the vehicle’s use in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for both crewed and uncrewed missions.

The DLR co-funded the Dream Chaser for European Utilization (DC4EU) study performed with SNC and OHB Systems AG (OHB). The reusable space vehicle can conduct a variety of missions including in-orbit servicing, in-space assembly and can function as an independent science platform.

“The DC4EU investigation was conducted in a close collaboration between OHB and SNC in which applications for the Dream Chaser including crewed and uncrewed flights to LEO for concrete missions such as microgravity science, satellite servicing and Active Debris Removal (ADR) were thoroughly reviewed. It has been shown that the Dream Chaser has a very high exploitation potential for a variety of European needs at reasonable costs, especially as unmanned science platform in LEO as well as a spacecraft for ADR,” Fritz Merkle, member of OHB AG’s executive management board, told Via Satellite.