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That first NASA mission will be known as USCV-1 (US Crew Vehicle -1), a flight that has been manifested \u2013 per recent NASA schedules \u2013 for a historic docking with the ISS on December 7, 2017.<\/p>\n
The three companies are finishing up the phase 2 elements of the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreement (SAA) milestones, on a path that positions them to potentially conducting test flights in 2016 or 2017.<\/p>\n
![\"Z4\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Z44.jpg\")
SpaceX \u2013 with its impressive Dragon V2 spacecraft \u2013 recently completed its integrated crew vehicle CDR (Critical Design Review), while its operations CDR is also in work.<\/p>\nSpaceX also has an exciting set of testing to conduct in the coming months, via a pad abort test, to be followed by an in-flight abort test.<\/p>\n
SNC recently finished wind tunnel testing on the Dream Chaser system and completed main propulsion system and reaction control system tests.<\/p>\n
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The Dream Chaser ETA (Engineering Test Article) is also being prepared to head back out to California for a second series of landing tests at the end of this year.<\/p>\n
![\"C3PF\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Z35.jpg\")
Boeing\u2019s CST-100 is waiting for her new home to be readied in Florida, as workers finish converting Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF-3) into the new Kennedy Space Center (KSC) operations base for the capsule.<\/p>\nBoeing also recently completed its Critical Design Review (CDR) and the phase 2 Safety Review Board.<\/p>\n
The CST-100 spacecraft will undergo a pad-abort test in 2016, an uncrewed flight in early 2017, leading up to the first crewed flight to the ISS in mid-2017<\/p>\n
![\"2014-08-17](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/2014-08-17-22_59_02-nasa-commercial-crew-Google-Search-350x240.jpg\")
The transition from CCiCAP to CCtCAP was always unlikely to allow all three companies to gain continued NASA funding.<\/p>\nNervousness surrounding the impending decision was understandable, with billions of NASA dollars on the table for the winning parties.<\/p>\n
While the selection process is highly secretive, speculation from within the competing companies almost universally portrayed Dream Chaser and Dragon V2 as the likely winners, prior to the expected period of silence of late, as the decision entered a political phase ahead of NASA\u2019s announcement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
However, by Monday, a source apparently associated with the selection process opted to leak the news that Boeing was one of the winners to the Wall Street Journal, much to the bemusement of the workers within the competing companies.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Z122.jpg\")
Meanwhile, just a few hours prior to the NASA announcement \u2013 and with the news spread over several news outlets \u2013 SNC called an emotional \u201cAll-Hands\u201d meeting to confirm the rumors in the media were true, that they had lost out on the CCtCAP award.<\/p>\nSNC are understood to be looking at potential options for Dream Chaser, but they will at least continue with their current CCiCAP milestones requirements.<\/p>\n
As expected, NASA added that SNC could continue its partnership with the Agency past CCiCAP on an unfunded basis. This may be a viable option, given Dream Chaser has already attracted the interest of external customers, including space agencies in Europe.<\/p>\n
![\"2014-09-17](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/2014-09-17-03_48_30-boeing-cst-100-Google-Search-350x343.jpg\")
Back at Boeing, it\u2019s happy days. On top of the billions of NASA dollars they are gaining for their role as the prime contractor on the Space Launch System (SLS), the huge multi-national company can look forward to an additional $4.2 billion from the Agency to progress the CST-100 capsule into space operations.<\/p>\nIn announcing the CCtCAP funding, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden proclaimed he was \u201cgiddy\u201d at the award confirmation \u2013 before spending most of his opening remarks on SLS and NASA\u2019s aspiration of exploring of deep space. Although slightly baffling at first, the association with the CCtCAP awards became clear at the end of his remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said all of that because I want you to take it all in totality,\u201d noted General Bolden, before adding the path to exploration requires a strong Low Earth Orbit (LEO) infrastructure as a foundation.<\/p>\n
![\"Z7\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Z711.jpg\")
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, however, made a more profound association between the commercialization of LEO and the path to deep space.<\/p>\n\u201cSpaceX is deeply honored by the trust NASA has placed in us. We welcome today\u2019s decision and the mission it advances with gratitude and seriousness of purpose,\u201d the SpaceX founder noted in a statement. \u201cIt is a vital step in a journey that will ultimately take us to the stars and make humanity a multi-planet species.\u201d<\/p>\n
SpaceX was the other big winner of the CCtCAP decision, resulting in $2.6 billion in funding for its path toward Dragon V2\u2019s missions to the ISS \u2013 an achievement SpaceX is already well-versed in with the cargo version of the Dragon, with the next spacecraft preparing for another mission to the Station via CRS-4\/SpX-4.<\/p>\n
![\"Z7\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Z7.jpg\")
The path toward human missions will include at least one crewed flight test per company with at least one NASA astronaut aboard to \u201cverify the fully integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all its systems perform as expected.\u201d<\/p>\nFollowing the competition and review of the test flight \u2013 achieving the required NASA certification \u2013 each contractor will conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the Station.<\/p>\n
As expected, the commercial spacecraft will \u2013 like the Russian Soyuz they are set to replace as the means for NASA astronauts to head uphill \u2013 serve as a lifeboat at the orbital outpost, in turn allowing for an increased crew compliment on the ISS.<\/p>\n
Specific feature articles on the path for Dragon, CST-100 and Dream Chaser will follow over the near-term period.<\/p>\n
(Images via SpaceX, Boeing, SNC, NASA and L2).<\/p>\n
(Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can support NSF and access the best space flight content on the entire internet).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just weeks ago, it was widely believed both SpaceX\u2019s Dragon V2 and SNC\u2019s Dream Chaser spacecraft were likely to progress into the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program. On Tuesday, NASA announced Boeing\u2019s CST-100 was the winner of billions of dollars alongside the SpaceX spacecraft. CCtCAP: The three main Commercial Crew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,8996,4055,7893,3985,1565,1395,970,233,8894,316],"class_list":["post-39503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-ccdev","tag-ccicap","tag-ccp","tag-cctcap","tag-cst-100","tag-dragon","tag-dream-chaser","tag-iss","tag-snc","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}