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Space

DARPA Taps Boeing To Build Experimental Spaceplane

By Marc Selinger

Wednesday, May 24th, 2017

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DARPA Taps Boeing To Build Experimental Spaceplane

An artist's rendering of Boeing's Phantom Express. (Courtesy of Boeing)

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has picked Boeing [BA] over two other companies to design, build and test an unmanned, reusable spaceplane that could deploy small satellites, DARPA and Boeing announced May 24.Boeing edged out competitors Masten Space Systems and Northrop Grumman [NOC] to become the prime contractor for the Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program.Boeing’s Phantom Express will be powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne [AJRD] AR-22 engine, a version of the legacy Space Shuttle main engine. Boeing was…

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