NASA will partner with seven U.S. companies to meet future commercial and government needs, ultimately benefitting human spaceflight and the U.S. commercial low Earth orbit economy.
Through unfunded Space Act Agreements, the second Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities-2 initiative (CCSC-2) is designed to advance commercial space-related efforts through NASA contributions of technical expertise, assessments, lessons learned, technologies, and data. Structured sharing of NASA expertise demands minimal government resources but fosters development of capabilities that can be crucial to development of a robust low Earth orbit economy.
I think I want separate threads for a bunch of these, because there’s so much to think about.
SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on an integrated low Earth orbit architecture to provide a growing portfolio of technology with near-term Dragon evolution and concurrent Starship development. This architecture includes Starship as a transportation and in-space low-Earth orbit destination element supported by Super Heavy, Dragon, and Starlink, and constituent capabilities including crew and cargo transportation, communications, and operational and ground support.
This is the first I’ve heard about this work with SpaceX. A Starship-based station makes a ton of sense. Connecting it to Starlink is a great pairing.
Some of the Commercial LEO Destinations providers have worried about closing their business case with NASA astronauts, tourism, and some private research and manufacturing. I think they should be even more worried if a Starship-based station is coming to LEO.
Ok I’ll combine two:
Vast and ThinkOrbital
They don’t have any real NASA contracts as far as I know, but I love their concepts (ThinkOrbital’s on-orbit assembled sphere, and Vast’s low-tech space RV), and it’s great to see that they’re both working with the experts.
Northrop Grumman is collaborating with NASA on the company’s Persistent Platform to provide autonomous and robotic capabilities for commercial science research and manufacturing capabilities in low Earth orbit
Oops, all Cygnus.
I hadn’t seen this specific small free-flyer before. It looks like a regular Cygnus with a great service module. I can’t find anything else online about this, but I always love a new entry in the Cygnus cinematic universe.
