The Sierra Nevada company has designed a reusable space plane that will be used to transfer cargo, and hopefully, one day people to the International Space Station.

The plane will be constructed by Lockheed Martin in Louisville, Colorado and ready to fly on its first planned mission in 2021.

 

Eren Ozmen, chairwoman and president of SNC said:

“It’s an extraordinary engineering and manufacturing accomplishment. Our team has been looking forward to this day for a long time so that we can fully assemble America’s spaceplane in preparation for its first mission for NASA.”

 

In 2017, NASA did a "free flight" test flight, dropping the plane from a helicopter to make sure it could be approved for missions before moving forward on more construction.

NASA is contracted for six flight missions, but could end up getting more because according to NASASpaceflight, each plane could be reused up to 15 times.

Source: Forbes

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