Sierra Space

Sierra Space has laid off 165 full-time employees in addition to contractors after it shipped the company’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane for prelaunch tests.

After four years of assembly and decades of study and planning, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane is ready for prelaunch environmental testing.

A Japanese partnership of MUFG Bank, Kanematsu and Tokio Marine & Nichido led the Sierra Space funding round, which will fund space station development.

For burst testing, a scaled LIFE inflatable habitat was filled with air until it ruptured as Sierra works to deploy a full-scale version to low Earth Orbit.

NASA is working with at least six companies interested in operating orbital outposts.

The Defense Innovation Unit wants ideas on how to transport military cargo around the Earth via rockets, as well as ways to store military payloads in orbit.

Ultimately, heritage hardware, not new technology, is the cause.

Operating under unfunded Space Act Agreements, the companies will work for periods of 12 to 24 months.

As NASA closes in on releasing a request for proposals for a rover vehicle service on the Moon, Leidos has unveiled a prototype Lunar Terrain Vehicle.

The partnership is designed to speed up the on-orbit installation of higher-volume LIFE inflatable modules.

Sierra Space is moving on to tests of its inflatable habitat technology with hard structures inside the pressure shell.

Former top Boeing lobbyist Tim Keating has been named head of a new Sierra Space business unit.

More analysis of a Blue Origin BE-4 qualification engine for ULA’s Vulcan rocket program is pushing the booster’s debut flight to no earlier than May 4.

The cloud-computing company sees space as the next frontier for its technology.