Wed, Sep 01, 2010
CRuSR Awards Will Fund Seven Flights
NASA's Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR)
has awarded a total of approximately $475,000 to Armadillo
Aerospace of Rockwall, TX and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, CA.
The awards will allow the two companies to perform test flights of
their experimental vehicles near the edge of space.
The flights will demonstrate the capabilities of new vehicles to
provide recoverable launch and testing of small payloads going to
"near-space," the region of Earth's atmosphere between 65,000 and
350,000 feet. The CRuSR program fosters the development of
commercial reusable transportation to near space. The overall goal
of the program is regular, frequent and predictable access to
near-space at a reasonable cost with easy recovery of intact
payloads.
"These two awards are just the beginning of an innovative
teaming relationship with industry to provide affordable access to
the edge of space while evaluating the microgravity environment for
future science and technology experiments," said NASA Chief
Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "CRuSR
represents the sort of government-commercial partnership that will
facilitate near-space access at affordable costs."
The CRuSR awards will fund two flights this fall and one this
winter of Armadillo's Super-Mod vehicle from Spaceport America in
New Mexico. The first two flights will be to an altitude of
approximately nine miles and the third to approximately 25
miles.
The Masten Space Systems' Xaero vehicle will make four flights
this winter from the Mojave Spaceport in California. Two flights
will reach an altitude of approximately three miles and two others
will be to approximately 18 miles, with an engine shutdown during
flight.
Both launch vehicles will be modified to mount three antennas
for the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) payload.
ADS-B-equipped vehicles can determine their position using global
navigation satellite systems. The vehicles can periodically
broadcast position data and other relevant information to ground
stations and other similarly equipped aircraft.
In NASA's fiscal 2011 Space Technology Program, CRuSR will
become an integral part of the Flight Opportunities Program within
the Office of the Chief Technologist.
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