DARPA reportedly working on new unmanned space shuttle

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is on a quest to build a next-gen space shuttle, and recent reports indicate that it will be an unmanned, reusable aircraft capable of sending small payloads into orbit before safely returning to Earth for refueling

The vehicle in question, the XS-1 project, has been in the works for at least two years, according to The Motley Fool and Science World Report, and while it will be tasked with carrying a variety of probes into space, it will not enter orbit itself, traveling only as far as the “edge of space.”

Once it reaches its destination and releases its payload, the XS-1 will then come back to Earth, landing like an airplane. It will then be refueled so that it could be used as soon as the next day, and DARPA’s goal is to have the space plane fly up to 10 times in a matter of just 10 days.

Planes could be ready for flight testing in less than five years

In the first phase of the project, three different aerospace development teams – Boeing / Blue Origin; Northrop Grumman / Virgin Galactic; and Masten Space Systems / XCOR Aerospace – joined forces to help DARPA explore the technical feasibility of constructing a shuttle-like craft capable of placing small satellites into orbit at a cost of just $5 million per mission.

According to The Motley Fool, that phase of the XS-1 project has been completed, and the firm has now moved on to the second and third phases, which involve building an actual prototype of the vehicle. The six companies listed above and any other interested party were invited in April to submit concepts for a possible XS-1 prototype.

Now, DARPA intends to send out official requests for those proposals, which the agency will be evaluating. A winner will be chosen, perhaps as early as next year, and the winning company (or companies) will be awarded a contract to design, build, and test a prototype (Phase 2) and another to conduct flight tests of their newly-built space plane (Phase 3), according to reports.

No official deadline has been announced for the competition, but DARPA has declared that the winning bidder must utilize a propulsion system that will be flight ready by the 2020 fiscal year, suggesting that the vehicle itself will need to be ready for flight tests by that time. Phase 2 and 3 contracts will be worth a total of more than $140 million.

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Image credit: DARPA

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