The United Nations’ announced plans Tuesday to launch its first-ever space mission in 2021 with the help of U.S. -based company Sierra Nevada.
A two-week long robotic mission to low-Earth orbit will be paid for by the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and launched on Sierra Nevada’s shuttle, called Dream Chaser. Any U.N. member states would be able to put a small payload of scientific experiments onto the shuttle.
“One of UNOOSA’s core responsibilities is to promote international cooperation in the peaceful use of outer space,” Simonetta Di Pippo, Director of UNOOSA, said in a statement. “I am proud to say that one of the ways UNOOSA will achieve this, in cooperation with our partner SNC [Sierra Nevada Corporation], is by dedicating an entire microgravity mission to United Nations member states, many of which do not have the infrastructure or financial backing to have a stand-alone space program.”
UNOOSA and Sierra Nevada are also looking for sponsors to help fund the mission and any country which launched an experiment would pay a small fee. Similar international projects have a dismal record.
Dream Chaser will undergo its first test flight later this year and the company plans to send the shuttle into space in late 2019. Sierra Nevada shipped Dream Chaser, the world’s first private and pilot-less space shuttle, to California for testing in July.
“We’re going to take it up to a very high altitude. We’re going to drop it and it’s going to fly itself,” Mark Sirangelo, the vice president of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, told a local Colorado news outlet. “It’s autonomous space vehicle, which means that onboard computers control everything that it does.”
NASA has a contract to use Dream Chaser to resupply the International Space Station by carrying cargo and eventually people up to it. Further development of the shuttle includes a manned version that would be capable of carrying up to seven people to and from low-Earth-orbit.
Sierra Nevada intends Dream Chaser to be fully reusable, which could make the drone shuttle much cheaper than NASA’s manned shuttle. Reusable space technology is considered a major advance because it has the potential to lower the costs of getting into orbit, which are high due to expensive rocket components. Currently, the only working space shuttle drone is the Boeing X-37, operated by the U.S. Air Force for orbital spaceflight missions.
America’s now decommissioned Space Shuttle was only technically reusable because its giant fuel tank was discarded after each launch, and its side boosters were parachuted into corrosive salt water. This required them to be extensively refurbished after use, making the Space Shuttle extremely expensive.
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