Spaceflight

NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services demonstration target date could be extended into the next decade

By Rob Coppinger in London

The 2010 target date for NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Service (COTS) demonstrations could change, according to the agency’s administrator Michael Griffin.
COTS is NASA’s project to enable competitive procurement of International Space Station cargo supply services early in the next decade.
Its two phases are, demonstration of cargo transportation capabilities to and from low-Earth orbit by 2010, and then a post-2010 competition to provide crew transportation - if sufficient capability were demonstrated. The US space systems companies Andrews Space, Spacehab, Rocketplane-Kistler, SpaceDev, Space Exploration Technologies and Transformational Space are all competing for COTS contracts.
Sources close to the companies have told Flight International that the NASA budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 has a major reduction for COTS, which could make the project’s targets unobtainable.
Speaking at his 30 June Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) press conference for Space Shuttle Discovery‘s International Space Station logistics mission, STS-121 Griffin said: “If 2010 is not realistic then we'll see where we'll go from there".

Left to right: Dean Acosta, NASA public relations, Michael Griffin, NASA adminisrator, William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations.

Despite the 2007 budget concerns the agency will provide $50 million for COTS, divided between the winners, in its first fiscal year.
The winners will be selected by NASA’s Commercial Crew/Cargo Project Office by the end of the third quarter of this year, to enter into Space Act Agreements (SAA) to develop the transport systems.
SAAs are arrangements for the involvement of NASA personnel and, or facilities in work undertaken by a third party. Although SAAs have seen NASA charge companies for its services.
On 30 June at an earlier NASA KSC press conference, concerning the agency’s new exploration systems, Constellation programme manager Jeffrey Hanley said that the down select to one contractor for the soon-to-be renamed Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) will now be in September.
In April Griffin told Flight International that the 7 August, identified in the CEVs request for proposals for the call for improvements, was a firm date.