Is The Orbital Reef Space Station On Schedule?
It’s already been a few years since work began on the Orbital Reef Space Station. Led by partners Blue Origin and Sierra Space, the station is expected to be a one of a kind mixed use business park in low Earth orbit. With features such as laboratories, gardens, and habitation amenities, the goal is to create an orbital community.
However, logistically, this station is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past. This includes massive primary modules, new technology, and a lot of partners each with important contributions. All of which put pressure on the ambitious timeline and completion date of Orbital Reef. In terms of physical station progress, right now there is very little as work still continues on system reviews.
Once complete, work on actual station segments and hardware is expected to begin in order to have an up and running next generation space station by 2027. Here I will go more in-depth into the progress of this station, what makes it unique, what we can expect in the coming months, and more.
Station Progress
They describe Orbital Reef as a “premier mixed-use space station in low Earth orbit for commerce, research, and tourism by the end of this decade. Designed for use cases and ideas never before possible, Orbital Reef unlocks LEO by reducing cost and complexity for new kinds of customers. We provide end-to-end services, standard interfaces, and technical support needed by space flight novices: planning, payload development, training, transportation, data analysis, and security for your people or payloads (or both).”
Now in early May, the last significant update regarding the station itself was almost a full year ago in August 2022. Specifically, last year, The Orbital Reef team successfully completed its System Definition Review (SDR) with NASA. The milestone showed that Orbital Reef’s envisioned architecture is sound and cleared the project to proceed further into the design phase. Since then, we haven’t heard anything regarding the design phase progress or its estimated completion date. Until this design phase is complete and approved by NASA, a lot of the physical construction of the station segments and other hardware will need to be held off.
This being said, the physical station segments are not the only factor relating to the station’s future schedule and operations. Unlike Axiom Station for example, which is being worked on by one company with help from NASA, Orbital Reef has a bunch of different partners. The full team includes Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University. Even Amazon joined the team and is expected to oversee logistics using its Distribution and Fulfillment Solutions arm. Not to mention Amazon Web Services meant to offer networking, cloud computing and communications solutions for the station’s fight operations, development and design teams.
While having a group can help speed up work and development in different projects, it can also become a limiting factor. Blue Origin and Sierra Space have the majority of responsibilities for the station. Blue Origin will provide utility systems, large-diameter core modules, and the reusable heavy-lift New Glenn launch system. Sierra Space on the other hand will provide the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module, node module, and runway landing Dream Chaser spaceplane for crew and cargo transportation. While some of these different additions are replaceable, others are not. New Glenn for example will be practically necessary for this project due to the core module size.
LIFE when fully inflated measures 27 feet by 27 feet or 8.2 by 8.2 meters. Just based on the comparison between the two, the large metal modules look to be around 6 meters in diameter and very long. Other rockets such as ULA’s Vulcan or even the Falcon Heavy don’t have that big of a payload fairing. This means that if in a few years from now everything is ready for Orbital Reef but New Glenn is still being worked on, a replacement vehicle might not be available. This added responsibility of New Glenn creates more risk due to the fact that New Glenn is an extremely ambitious rocket that could easily be delayed multiple years based on initial test results and more. While Blue Origin has been making some progress on the launch vehicle, it’s very hard to keep track of its schedule as the company keeps a lot of information to itself. An important factor in the grand scheme of things.
Dream Chaser Delays
Dream Chaser is another system with an important job for this station. With the exception of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, Dream Chaser is meant to be the main vehicle for human and cargo transport to and from Orbital Reef. The Dream Chaser spaceplane is a multi-mission vehicle capable of supporting a variety of LEO needs. It can be customized for both domestic and international customers via vehicle configuration, launch site, destination, landing site, duration, and a host of other variables. Dream Chaser was originally designed as a crewed spaceplane, in part under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to and from the space station and other low Earth orbit (LEO) destinations. Dream Chaser is 30 feet, or 9 meters long—roughly ¼ the total length of the space shuttle orbiters.
The future timeline of this spaceplane involves initial uncrewed test flights of the cargo version and work on a separate variant designed for crew. Unfortunately, the initial test flight continues to get pushed back. What was intended to happen just months from now, will now launch no earlier than then late this year.
Specifically, NASA updated its internal schedule to show that Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft will now berth to the International Space Station no earlier than December 17, 2023. The company was quoted saying, “Sierra Space’s plan is to complete the first launch of Dream Chaser by the end of the fourth quarter this year.”
On the bright side, if everything were to be ready for the station with the exception of Dream Chaser, other spacecraft could be used successfully. In reality, with a timeline and completion date years away, it’s hard to determine which current launch and habitation technology will be ready and which won’t. What we do know is that delays are very common and next generation hardware like this can always run into unforeseen issues.
Focusing more on the station, on Orbital Reef, shared infrastructure is meant to support the proprietary needs of tenants and visitors. In a statement, the company points out, “This business model – traditional on Earth but unprecedented in space – lowers barriers for all customers and promotes competitive development of space applications. The Baseline configuration has separate science and habitation zones and supports 10 people in a volume almost as large as the International Space Station (ISS). Scalable by design, total volume can easily expand as needed to support growing customers and needs.”
Originally in late 2021, Orbital Reef was selected today by NASA for a funded Space Act Agreement for collaboration to design a commercially owned and operated space station in low Earth orbit (LEO). NASA’s Commercial LEO Development program aims to shift NASA’s research and exploration activities in LEO to commercial space stations, helping stimulate a growing space economy before the International Space Station is retired. Blue Origin was awarded $130 million. These Space Act Agreements are the first phase of two with which NASA aims to maintain an uninterrupted U.S. presence in low-Earth orbit by transitioning from the International Space Station to other platforms.
In terms of competition, Axiom Space is nearing completion on a few of its physical modules. Once ready they will launch and connect to the International Space Station before separating once it’s capable of being independent. This is expected to happen in just a few years from now. Orbital Reef doesn’t have the benefit of this ISS connection and docking point as they build up the station. While not ideal, they will still be fine and have the opportunity to complete the station by the end of this decade.
Orbital Reef is meant to provide everything researchers need for fundamental science and applications development: experiment accommodations inside and outside; a spacious laboratory equipped with next-generation shared facilities; technician time; and proprietary provisions, even dedicated, closed-hatch modules. Whether for physical, biological, or Earth science, for new product development, or for testing exploration systems, Orbital Reef is expected to have it. As far as the business model, the company is trying to market the station with examples such as film-making in microgravity, opening a space hotel, or conducting cutting edge research. A statement says, “We sell only the utilities and services you need to sustain your business: power, cooling, high-bandwidth communications, information and physical security, robotic servicing, technician attention, stowage, and logistics.” Something we will have to keep up with in the coming years.
Conclusion
Blue Origin, Sierra Space, and their many partners are all working on different aspects of the Orbital Reef space station. Work is continuing on the design phase in preparation for physical work on station segments and eventually launches. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.