NASA Selects Seven Firms To Provide Near-Space Flight Services

[NASA News <hqnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

August 09, 2011

David E. Steitz 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1730 
david.steitz@xxxxxxxx 

Leslie Williams 
Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. 
661-276-3893 
leslie.a.williams@xxxxxxxx   


RELEASE: 11-258

NASA SELECTS SEVEN FIRMS TO PROVIDE NEAR-SPACE FLIGHT SERVICES

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected seven companies to integrate and fly 
technology payloads on commercial suborbital reusable platforms that 
carry payloads near the boundary of space. 

As part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, each successful vendor 
will receive an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. 
These two-year contracts, worth a combined total of $10 million, will 
allow NASA to draw from a pool of commercial space companies to 
deliver payload integration and flight services. The flights will 
carry a variety of payloads to help meet the agency's research and 
technology needs. 

"Through this catalog approach, NASA is moving toward the goal of 
making frequent, low-cost access to near-space available to a wide 
range of engineers, scientists and technologists," said NASA Chief 
Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The 
government's ability to open the suborbital research frontier to a 
broad community of innovators will enable maturation of the new 
technologies and capabilities needed for NASA's future missions in 
space." 

The selected companies are: 
-- Armadillo Aerospace, Heath, Texas 
-- Near Space Corp., Tillamook, Ore. 
-- Masten Space Systems, Mojave, Calif. 
-- Up Aerospace Inc., Highlands Ranch, Colo. 
-- Virgin Galactic, Mojave, Calif. 
-- Whittinghill Aerospace LLC, Camarillo, Calif. 
-- XCOR, Mojave, Calif. 

NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist is charged with maturing 
crosscutting technologies to flight readiness status for future space 
missions. Through these indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity 
contracts, NASA intends to provide frequent flight opportunities for 
payloads on suborbital platforms. 

The Flight Opportunities Program is managed at NASA's Dryden Flight 
Research Center in Edwards, Calif. For more information on the 
program, visit: 


http://flightopportunities.nasa.gov 


For more information about NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist, 
visit: 


http://www.nasa.gov/oct   

	
-end-



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