Dream Chaser Spaceplane Wing Integration Underway
The wings for the Dream Chaser spaceplane are officially being integrated on Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) production floor in Louisville, CO. The wings arrived in 2020, but SNC engineers and technicians needed the wing assembly jig to arrive in order for the assembly, integration and testing process to begin.
SNC worked closely with engineers at Models and Tools, located in Detroit, Michigan, to design the wing tooling unique for the wing build.
This past November, both wings were placed in their jigs and rotated simultaneously. This was a unique occurrence because it took coordination from both the first and second shift crews. The simultaneous rotation allowed both shifts to see all angles of the wings and go through the step by step instructions they’ll need to follow in order to build the wings out.
The tooling is mission critical, and the rotation of the tooling allows for access and installation of critical components with very tight tolerance to ensure mission success.
More than 65 individual pieces need to be installed to the wings to make them fully functional, and that doesn’t even include the Thermal Protection System tiles, which give the wings their black and white color. The first installation will be the hard points. Those are pieces of hardware that give the engineers and technicians handling points to allow for installation to Dream Chaser.
The wings are expected to be installed by summer 2021.
SNC’s Dream Chaser spaceplane is a multi-mission space utility vehicle designed to transport crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit (LEO) destinations such as the International Space Station.
Dream Chaser was selected by NASA to provide cargo delivery, return and disposal service for the space station under the Commercial Resupply Service 2 (CRS-2) contract. Dream Chaser Tenacity will be the first orbital vehicle in our Dream Chaser spaceplane fleet.
Dream Chaser will provide a minimum of six cargo missions to and from the space station carrying critical supplies like food, water, and science experiments and returns to Earth with a gentle runway landing.
(Images provided with Sierra Nevada Corporation news release)