LOUISVILLE, Colorado - July 25, 2024 -Sierra Space, a leading commercial space technology company building a platform in space to benefit life on Earth , today announced that its expandable space station technology has successfully completed a seventh major validation test and a second large-scale structural test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The results mark a giant leap toward building the world’s first end-to-end business and technology platform in Low Earth Orbit, enabling humanity to find answers to some of Earth’s toughest problems.
The completion of the successful Ultimate Burst Pressure test, which took place on June 18 in collaboration with ILC Dover (an Ingersoll Rand Business) and NASA, accelerates Sierra Space’s revolutionary soft goods technology into in-space operations. The technology is planned for a first autonomous Pathfinder mission before the end of the decade and will also be a key element of the commercial space station Orbital Reef. The test completes Milestone #8 for Orbital Reef with Blue Origin under NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program.
“We are 100 percent committed to maintaining U.S. leadership in Low Earth Orbit. Sierra Space is leading the way with the first commercial space station to replace the International Space Station when it retires, ensuring there is no gap in LEO,” said Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space. “Our revolutionary, expandable space station technology is reinventing the space station. For the first time, our technology will enable the right unit economics that will usher in the full commercialization of space. Our biotech and industrial partners will use our factories of the future to innovate new products that will massively disrupt terrestrial markets and benefit life on Earth.”
The test article in the company historic first full-scale burst test last December peaked at 77 psi, well above (+27%) NASA’s recommended level of 60.8 psi (maximum operating pressure of 15.2 psi multiplied by a safety factor of four). This most recent test in June showed similar results – within five percent of the December test article’s pressure load – reaching 74 psi, exceeding NASA’s 4x safety factor by 22 percent. These back-to-back test results accelerate Sierra Space’s path to flight certification, verifying scalability for structures as small as 10 cubic meters and up to 1,400 cubic meters, based on the company’s current inflatable soft goods architecture. Sierra Space is currently gearing up for an initial test of its 500 cubic meter space station technology next year.
“No other company is moving at the speed of Sierra Space to develop actual hardware that has been stress-tested at full scale and demonstrated repeatability. We took a soft goods system that very few companies in the world have been able to design, and now we have consistent, back-to-back results,” said Shawn Buckley, VP of Earthspace™ Systems, Space Stations, at Sierra Space. “A second successful full-scale test is an absolute game changer. We now know that it is possible to match or exceed the total habitable volume of the entire International Space Station in a single launch.”
The test article again included two four-by-four-foot blanks—metal structures placed inside the softgoods’ casing to simulate a future design component, such as a window, a robotic arm, or an antenna mount. They were 50 pounds lighter than the ones used in the first full-scale test and were designed to accommodate larger windows.
In the ever-evolving landscape of space exploration and commercialization, Sierra Space’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®) technology is a breakthrough concept that will reshape the way humans live and work in space. LIFE is launched aboard a conventional rocket and inflates in orbit. The first LIFE product in the roadmap is a large, three-story, 27-foot diameter structure that comfortably sleeps four astronauts, with additional space for science experiments, fitness equipment, a medical center and an Astro Garden® system that can grow fresh produce for astronauts on long-duration space missions.
About Sierra Space
Sierra Space is a leading commercial space company at the forefront of innovation and commercialization of space in the Orbital Age®, building an end-to-end business and technology platform in space to sustain life on Earth. With more than 30 years of experience and 500 space missions, the company is reinventing space transportation with Dream Hunter®, the world’s only commercial spaceplane, and the future of space destinations with the company’s inflatable and expandable space station technology. Through commercial business models, the company also provides orbital services to commercial, DoD, and national security organizations, expanding manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of constellation programs. Additionally, Sierra Space builds a broad range of systems and subsystems in the areas of solar energy, mechanical and motion control, environmental control, life support, propulsion, and thermal control, providing numerous space-as-a-service solutions for the new space economy.
Source: Sierra Space
