Space Plane

Northrop Grumman issued a press release today that it is developing, in conjunction with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, a preliminary design and flight demonstration plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 competition.

We're not quite sure why it took so long for Northrop to release the statement; Inside the Air Force reported on the competition last month, when DARPA first announced the teaming arrangements:

"We chose performers who could prudently integrate existing and up-and-coming technologies and operations, while making XS-1 as reliable, easy-to-use and cost-effective as possible," DARPA XS-1 Program Manager Jess Sponable said in the July 15 statement. "We're eager to see how their initial designs envision making spaceflight commonplace -- with all the potential military, civilian and commercial benefits that capability would provide."

The program also has applications for military, civilian and commercial users, and will also further the development of hypersonic flight technologies. One of the technical goals of the program is to achieve a hypersonic speed of Mach 10 or greater at least once during the flight.

"These opportunities include both launching small payloads per the program goals as well as others, such as supporting future hypersonic testing and a future space-access aircraft," DARPA said.

Boeing and Northrop were awarded $4 million contracts and Masten will receive $3 million, according to the respective contracting announcements. Phase 2 contracts are due to be awarded in fiscal year 2015 and a demonstration is scheduled for FY-18, depending on the success of earlier phases, according to the BAA.