Sierra Nevada Corporation Enters Dream Chaser® Critical Design Review, Completes NASA CCiCap CDR Entry Milestone

Sparks, Nev. (PRWEB) January 30, 2014

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announces the completion of the Dream Chaser® Incremental Critical Design Review (CDR) with the completion of Milestone 10a under its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA.

Mark N. Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of SNC’s Space Systems made the announcement at the Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS®) during his keynote address. RAMS is the premier event in the reliability, availability, and maintainability engineering disciplines. The RAMS event attracted hundreds of safety and reliability practitioners and engineering leaders from around the world.

“SNC’s Dream Chaser program continues its steady progress forward on the way to flight certification by completing this important milestone which begins our Dream Chaser Critical Design Review process,” said Sirangelo. “SNC is firmly committed to providing the safest, most reliable, and efficiently maintainable orbital transportation system with, the Dream Chaser Space System, by having the most experienced technical, safety, reliability and quality assurance team possible. The team is definitely ensuring that we incorporate the latest technology from all of these processes into SNC’s design.”

NASA added Milestone 10a to SNC’s CCiCap initiative in 2013 as part of the expansion of SNC’s program. During this entry milestone review, NASA approved the critical design products, plans, and processes that are being used to develop the Dream Chaser Space System (DCSS)which includes the Dream Chaser spacecraft, Atlas launch vehicle, mission and ground systems. The CDR level products will also support the subsystem and element critical design reviews that are occurring throughout the year and culminating with system level reviews scheduled to ensure all technical performance requirements are met while meeting Dream Chaser Program schedule and budget. The DCSS fabrication, assembly, integration, and test process has begun to support the recently announced November 2016 orbital launch.

John Turner, SNC’s director of safety and mission assurance for the Dream Chaser program, and member of the RAMS management committee added his thoughts, “I had the privilege of spending over 26 years at NASA working on planning, development, operations and safety aspects of the space shuttle, International Space Station, and Constellation Human Spaceflight programs. My main focus was and remains to ensure that all flight programs were safe, successful and exceeded mission targets. We are incorporating those best practices and lessons learned into our CDR processes for the Dream Chaser. We also have a world class team with strong experience in safety and risk management to ensure that we certify Dream Chaser as the safest human spaceflight vehicle yet to fly.”

David Oberhettinger, the general chair of the RAMS® 2014 symposium held in Colorado Springs, Colo., noted, “RAMS® is excited to have companies like SNC participate in our annual conference and benefit from the unique opportunities that we offer. Conference participants gain insights into latest advances in the field of reliability and maintainability than can be immediately applied to assure high product reliability, safety, and mission success.”

About Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems business area based in Louisville, Colo., designs and manufactures advanced spacecraft, space vehicles, rocket motors and spacecraft subsystems and components for the U.S. Government, commercial customers as well as for the international market. SNC’s Space Systems has more than 25 years of space heritage and has participated in over 400 successful space missions through the delivery of over 4,000 systems, subsystems and components. During its history, SNC’s Space Systems has concluded over 70 programs for NASA and over 50 other clients. For more information about SNC’s Space Systems visit http://www.sncspace.com and follow us on Facebook at Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems.

About Sierra Nevada Corporation
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), headquartered in Sparks, Nev., is one of America’s fastest growing private companies based on its significant expansion and reputation for rapid, innovative, and agile technology solutions in electronics, aerospace, avionics, space, propulsion, micro-satellite, aircraft, communications systems and solar energy. Under the leadership of CEO Fatih Ozmen and President Eren Ozmen, SNC has a workforce of over 3,000 personnel in 30 locations in 16 states. SNC’s six unique business areas are dedicated to providing leading-edge solutions to SNC’s dynamic customer base.

SNC is also the Top Woman-Owned Federal Contractor in the United States. Over the last 30 years under the Ozmen’s leadership, SNC has remained focused on providing its customers the very best in diversified technologies to meet their needs and has a strong and proven track record of success. The company continues to focus its growth on the commercial sector through internal advancements and outside acquisitions, including the emerging markets of renewable energy, telemedicine, nanotechnology, cyber and net-centric operations. For more information on SNC visit http://www.sncorp.com.

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