Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) on Friday protested NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) award to Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
(SpaceX) and Boeing [BA] with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Defense Daily has learned.
GAO is scheduled to have a protest decision no later than Jan. 5, 100 days following protest filing. NASA on Sept. 16 awarded a pair of contracts for Commercial Crew worth a combined $6.8 billion for the two companies to taxi astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) by 2017. Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion.
Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin also lost out on Commercial Crew, which is to provide an alternative to relying on Russia for traveling back and forth to the ISS. SNC had proposed its Dream Chaser space vehicle that looked like the Space Shuttle.
An email to SNC for comment was not returned by press time Friday. Boeing said in mid-September major milestone dates include a pad abort test in 2016 and an uncrewed flight in early 2017, leading up to the first crewed flight to ISS in mid-2017.