NASA: The flight plan for Dream Chaser Tenacity’s first demo mission to ISS
NASA today provided a detailed description of the flight plan for the first demo ISS mission of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reuseable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, now targeting some unspecified date in 2024.
It will carefully approach ISS, testing its maneuvering and rendezvous capibilities, and then be grabbed by the station’s robot arm to be berthed to the station.
On its first flight to the International Space Station, Dream Chaser is scheduled to deliver over 7,800 pounds of cargo. On future missions, Dream Chaser is being designed to stay attached to the station for up to 75 days and deliver as much as 11,500 pounds of cargo. Cargo can be loaded onto the spacecraft as late as 24 hours prior to launch. Dream Chaser can return over 3,500 pounds of cargo and experiment samples to Earth, while over 8,700 pounds of trash can be disposed of during reentry using its cargo module.
On this first demo flight it will remain docked for 45 days, and then land on the shuttle runway at Cape Canaveral.
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NASA today provided a detailed description of the flight plan for the first demo ISS mission of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reuseable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, now targeting some unspecified date in 2024.
It will carefully approach ISS, testing its maneuvering and rendezvous capibilities, and then be grabbed by the station’s robot arm to be berthed to the station.
On its first flight to the International Space Station, Dream Chaser is scheduled to deliver over 7,800 pounds of cargo. On future missions, Dream Chaser is being designed to stay attached to the station for up to 75 days and deliver as much as 11,500 pounds of cargo. Cargo can be loaded onto the spacecraft as late as 24 hours prior to launch. Dream Chaser can return over 3,500 pounds of cargo and experiment samples to Earth, while over 8,700 pounds of trash can be disposed of during reentry using its cargo module.
On this first demo flight it will remain docked for 45 days, and then land on the shuttle runway at Cape Canaveral.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Let us see if this works better than the Starliner. I certainly hope so.
Has anyone ever done a trash dump re-entry before? It would be interesting to see it as a night side event, like a giant sparkler in the sky!
There have been dozens of ISS trash dumps before. The European ATVs, the Japanese HTVs, the Russian Progresses and the U.S. Cygnuses did/do trash incineration re-entries at the end of every mission. Soon, they will be joined by the Dream Chaser’s Shooting Star modules while the spaceplane parts of Dream Chasers join Crew and Cargo Dragons in providing intact downmass landing capability from ISS.
Spectrum Shift: The Russians have been de-orbiting Progress freighters filled with garbage for decades. The various partners on ISS have done the same.
Most occur in remote regions of the Pacicit, but if you do some smart web searches, I am sure you can find a few examples where someone got footage.