The ISS R&D Conference is kicking off this week in DC with sure-to-be interesting keynotes by Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, and a few members of Congress, among others. But there are also a bunch of technical sessions in the afternoons, so I went digging through the agenda. I found two sessions by Sierra Nevada—one on Dream Chaser at the ISS and one on their NextSTEP-2 Deep Space Gateway concept. Lucky for us, the session PDFs are up already.

The session focused on science opportunities using Dream Chaser at ISS (PDF, 1.3MB) has a few things of note—either new information, more details on things we’ve heard in the past, or things I had forgotten until now:

Dream Chaser has 10+ day on-orbit free flight time. That’s a decent chunk of time, unlike the 60-hour limit for Starliner.

Its propulsion system can be used for ISS reboost.

The cargo module has 3 FRAMs for smaller, unpressurized cargo.

for smaller, unpressurized cargo. They’re advertising the cargo module as a temporary lab, too: ”Cargo module could be modified and left at station as desired. It could be launched with additional specialized facilities: Centrifuge, Rodent habitats, Glove boxes, etc.”

They also mention several service kits that can be added to the cargo module for additional capabilities: Modified solar arrays Dedicated battery packs Deployable radiators Upgraded antennas Additional data storage Dedicated payload downlinks Optical observation windows Unpressurized payload return



The session focused on testing their NextSTEP-2 Deep Space Gateway concept at the ISS (PDF, 1MB) is worth a look too see the basic layout of their concept. It’s based around Dream Chaser’s cargo module with an inflatable airlock and an inflatable habitat. They also mention and show a commercial LEO station comprised of 4 cargo modules with the potential addition of inflatable habitats.

Two thoughts that went through my mind as I went through the PDF: