In December 2008, the corporation completed its acquisition of
SpaceDev, to develop an
orbital
spacecraft called the
Dream Chaser. In April 2021, the corporation announced it would create
Sierra Space, an independent commercial space corporation to develop the reusable Dream Chaser spaceplane and work with
Blue Origin to create a commercial space station.
Dream Chaser spaceplane |290x290px In February 2010, Sierra Nevada Corporation was awarded $20 million in seed money in phase 1 of
NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program for the development of the Dream Chaser. Of the $50 million awarded in the phase 1 CCDev program, Dream Chaser's award represented the largest share of the funds. In August 2012, NASA announced new agreements with the Sierra Nevada Corporation and two other companies to design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflight capabilities, enabling a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil within the next five years. Advances made by these companies under newly signed
Space Act Agreements through the agency's
Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative were intended to ultimately lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers. As part of this agreement, Sierra Nevada Corporation was awarded $212.5 million to continue the development and testing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft. The Dream Chaser is a revival of NASA's
HL-20 Personnel Launch System lifting-body design. In July 2014, the corporation signed a letter of cooperation with
Tuskegee University to collaborate on efforts related to SNC's Dream Chaser. In August 2014,
Lockheed Martin and Sierra Nevada Corporation unveiled the composite airframe of the Dream Chaser, which was used to conduct its first orbital launch in 2016. Internally the Dream Chaser program team is frequently referred to as the "Dream Team." The team includes well-known aerospace industry partners such as Lockheed Martin and
United Launch Alliance,
NASA centers and universities across the United States, small businesses such as Craig Technologies, as well as the
European,
German and
Japanese
space agencies. In September 2014, Sierra Nevada Corporation lost the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract to SpaceX and
Boeing, which NASA chose as the two companies funded to develop systems to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station. Boeing won $4.2 billion and SpaceX won $2.6 billion to complete and certify their spacecraft by 2017. NASA deemed SNC's proposal less mature than SpaceX's or Boeing. In the selection statement,
Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human exploration and operations directorate, explained the decision by stating that "a winged spacecraft is a more complex design and thus entails more developmental and certification challenges, and therefore may have more technical and schedule risk than expected", and "I consider SNC's design to be at the lowest level of maturity, with significantly more technical work and critical design decisions to accomplish.... SNC's proposal also has more schedule uncertainty." Director Mark Sirangelo said the team was "devastated", and called it "like a death in the family", and
Washington Post said the corporation "entered a realm particular to the world of government contracting: that of the big-time corporate loser".
The Washington Post called the moves to preserve the program "straddling the fine line between faith and delusion, persistence and masochism". While the Dream Chaser was designed to carry passengers, they modified it for cargo and worked through Thanksgiving 2015 to meet a January 2016 bidding deadline. In January 2016, they were awarded a
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) contract for resupply missions to the
International Space Station between 2019 and 2024, guaranteeing a minimum of six launches.
RocketMotorTwo and STPSat-5 The corporation was the main contractor on
RocketMotorTwo for
Virgin Galactic's
SpaceShipTwo, and designed the
rocket engine for
Scaled Composites, including the one used for
SpaceShipOne. In April 2013, SpaceShipTwo completed its first powered flight test using RocketMotorTwo. After losing the bid for NASA commercial crew, Sierra Nevada reduced the staff working on RocketMotorTwo in September 2014. In late November, the corporation announced the permanent closure of their
Poway, California propulsion development facility as they intend to consolidate all propulsion activity in one location, at the facilities at Orbital Technologies Corp. In October 2014, the
United States Department of Defense awarded Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems a contract to develop and build a next-generation science and technology demonstration satellite, known as STPSat-5, for their
Space Test Program.
Artemis Human Landing System proposal SNC Space Systems, working with
Dynetics, participated in some early HLS design studies under NASA's HLS Appendix E program. They submitted a HLS proposal to NASA for HLS Appendix H, which was one of three proposals selected for further study, along with Blue Origin and SpaceX. NASA's Stephen Jurczyk identified the fuel drop tanks and low crew module as innovative strengths, but the propulsion system, identified by
Scott Manley as SNC's Vortex engines, was a low-maturity risk. Overall, their technical rating and management rating were listed as "very good", making the Dynetics proposal the highest-rated project.
Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) spacecraft SNC concluded a successful two-year on-orbit research mission for the
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in 2021. The mission utilized the Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) spacecraft in
medium Earth orbit (MEO) and helped utilize research and technologies that could advance the potential future deployment of
United States Department of Defense (DoD) spacecraft in the harsh radiation environment of MEO. The three successful DSX physics-based research/experiment areas included: Wave Particle Interaction Experiment (WPIx), Space Weather Experiment (SWx), and Space Environmental Effects (SFx). Robert Johnston, the principal investigator on the science side of the DSX team, commented on the DSX mission: "We will be working the science from this mission for the remainder of our careers ... DSX's contributions in understanding the environment of space are profound to our nation and the DoD." ==Other projects==