NASA Releases Commercial Crew Draft RFP, Announces CCDev2 Optional Milestones

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA unveiled Monday an outline of its acquisition strategy to procure transportation services from private industry to carry U.S. astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station. The agency also announced the addition of optional milestones for the Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) initiative.

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"This is a significant step forward in America's amazing story of space exploration," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "It's further evidence we are committed to fully implementing our plan – as laid out in the Authorization Act – to outsource our space station transportation so NASA can focus its energy and resources on deep space exploration."

NASA's draft request for proposal (RFP) outlines a contract that will be awarded to multiple companies that provide a complete end-to-end design, including spacecraft, launch vehicles, launch services, ground and mission operations and recovery. The Integrated Design Contract (IDC) of up to $1.61 billion will run from July 2012 through April 2014.

"This IDC effort will bring us through the critical design phase to fully incorporate our human spaceflight safety requirements and NASA's International Space Station mission needs," said NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango. "We look forward to strong U.S. industry response."

Bolden also announced Monday at a speech to the Air Force Association 2011 Air and Space Conference that NASA will fund optional milestones pre-negotiated as part of some of the original CCDev2 Space Act Agreements (SAA) to help accelerate development.

NASA amended Sierra Nevada Corp.'s SAA to include four optional milestones for a total of $25.6 million, bringing the potential value of Sierra Nevada's SAA to $105.6 million, if all milestones are completed successfully.

NASA also amended Boeing's SAA to include three optional milestones for a total of $20.6 million, bringing the potential value of Boeing's SAA to $112.9 million, if all milestones are reached.

"All four CCDev2 partners are performing very well and meeting their milestones," said Phil McAlister, director of NASA's Commercial Spaceflight Development. "These additional milestones were selected because they sufficiently accelerated the development of commercial crew transportation systems to justify additional NASA investment."

For more information on NASA's Commercial Crew Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial

SOURCE NASA