12 Companies to Provide Venture Class Launch Services for NASA
Press Release
From: NASA HQ
Posted: Wednesday, January 26, 2022
NASA has chosen 12 corporations to present launch companies for the company’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) missions, offering new alternatives for science and know-how payloads and fostering a rising U.S. business launch market.
Award picks are:
- ABL Space Systems of El Segundo, California
- Astra Space Inc. of Alameda, California
- Blue Origin Florida LLC of Merritt Island, Florida
- L2 Solutions LLC of Houston
- Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Chandler, Arizona
- Phantom Space Corporation of Tucson, Arizona
- Relativity Space Inc. of Long Beach, California
- Rocket Lab USA Inc. of Long Beach, California
- Spaceflight Inc. of Seattle
- Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California
- United Launch Services LLC of Centennial, Colorado
- Virgin Orbit LLC of Long Beach, California
The fixed-price indefinite-delivery/
“We are incredibly excited to announce the awardees for VADR from a broad range of established and emerging launch providers and launch service aggregators and brokers,” mentioned Bradley Smith, director of launch companies at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This speaks to our expertise in understanding the launch market as we crafted VADR to maximize our efforts in enabling a growing U.S launch industry. With this new tool in our toolbox, these tremendously flexible contracts will meet a wide variety of NASA science and technology needs, further enhancing the agency’s Launch Services Program’s reputation as Earth’s bridge to space.”
The VADR contract will present a broad vary of Federal Aviation Administration-licensed business launch companies able to delivering payloads starting from CubeSats to Class D missions to quite a lot of orbits. These small satellites and Class D payloads tolerate comparatively excessive danger and function a really perfect platform for technical and structure innovation, contributing to NASA’s science analysis and know-how growth.
The VADR acquisition builds on earlier procurement efforts such because the Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) and VCLS Demo 2 contracts, that are fostering growth of latest, small launch automobiles for NASA payloads.
Firm-fixed-price job orders will probably be issued to present the launch companies beneath these contracts for NASA and NASA-sponsored missions. Launches beneath the VADR contract will align with business practices, utilizing much less NASA oversight to obtain decrease launch prices.
NASA’s Launch Services Program on the company’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida will handle the VADR contracts. The company works with non-public trade, mission, and worldwide companions to launch science payloads starting from small satellites with faculties and universities to NASA’s highest precedence missions.
For extra details about NASA’s launch companies, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/
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