Sierra Nevada was awarded a contract from the Ministry of defense of the United States to develop on the basis of the vehicle (cargo module) Shooting Star (shooting star) Autonomous space station, according to the American aerospace company.
As noted by the Sierra Nevada, the station is used for experiments, in particular, in microgravity, and working out logistics for placing “outposts” in various earth orbits, for example, low, geostationary and highly elliptical.
The Drive writes that this decision is due to increasing attention of the Pentagon to low earth orbit and future exploration of the moon. The publication notes that the station can be used for Assembly and servicing of satellites and space vehicles, the possibility that “us military and NASA have been studied for some time.” It is not excluded that in the future the object can be visited by people.
The Drive recognizes that the payload which will contain the Shooting Star, unknown, however, admits that the speech can go about an offensive or defensive weapon. The publication says that the outer space Treaty of 1967, which was signed by the US, excludes the placement in outer space of weapons of mass destruction, but “does not expressly prohibit arming satellites or other space vehicles with conventional weapons”.
“Whatever this cosmic Outpost, he could be in orbit within the next two years,” concludes The Drive.
In may from the spaceport at Cape Canaveral in the interests of the air force (USAF), the United States launched heavy rocket Atlas 5 first stage which has a Russian RD-180 engine. The media has put into orbit reusable space vehicle X-37B, which is in the “Roskosmos” treated as “weapons of mass destruction”.
The product creates a Shooting Star Sierra Nevada in the framework of the NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2), involving the delivery created by the American companies space cargo ships to the International space station (ISS). The tool is designed for additional cargo storage and safe information debris into the atmosphere. A demonstration flight to the ISS means Shooting Star, in a high degree of readiness, is scheduled for 2021.
At length the Shooting Star is greater than four meters. The product is able to accommodate more than 4.5 tons of cargo inside a pressurized compartment, and outer cans, attached to three points of the vehicle. The product is equipped with two solar arrays and six engines that provide autonomy and maneuvering in earth orbit. Structurally, the Shooting Star is a disposable cargo module of the spacecraft reusable Dream Chaser, which must be brought to the orbit by rocket Atlas 5 or a promising carrier Vulcan.
In 2016, NASA announced the winners of the CRS-2 program to supply the ISS with cargo, the implementation of which is scheduled for 2019-2024 years (until completion of the service ISS). Contracts were awarded to SpaceX (reusable spacecraft Crew Dragon is supposed to be used as a truck), Northrop Grumman (Cygnus) and Sierra Nevada (Dream Chaser). In sum, all of them will pay NASA $ 14 billion. Earlier, in the framework of the CRS-1, supply of the ISS was done only SpaceX and Northrop Grumman.
