Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems wants a federal court to order work stopped on the SpaceX and Boeing Co. orbital space capsules for NASA while the company tries to restore space agency funding for its Dream Chaser spaceship.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims, in Washington D.C., held a closed-door hearing Friday on Louisville-based SNC Space Systems' lawsuit seeking to have the U.S. government freeze work on the Boeing and SpaceX vehicles while a previously filed protest over NASA bidding is sorted out.
The SNC Space Systems complaint against the federal government is sealed, as are many of the other documents. SpaceX and Boeing have intervened to represent their interests in the case.
On Sept. 16, NASA dropped the Dream Chaser space plane from the $6.8 billion final stage of NASA's commercial crew transportation program in which companies compete to develop spaceships to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
The company protested NASA's decision with the federal Government Accountability Office on Sept. 26, hoping to reverse Dream Chaser's exclusion on the grounds it would've saved NASA $900 million compared to the Boeing proposal it selected.
NASA initially halted work on Boeing and SpaceX's craft when the bid protest was filed. Then NASA reversed itself Oct. 9, citing authority to protect the country's international obligations.
"The agency recognizes that failure to provide the [commercial crew] transportation service as soon as possible poses risks to the International Space Station (ISS) crew, jeopardizes continued operation of the ISS, would delay meeting critical crew size requirements, and may result in the U.S. failing to perform the commitments it made in its international agreements," NASA said.
That NASA stance is a violation of federal law and an abuse of space agency's discretion considering that there's a legal bid protest filed with the GAO, SNC Space Systems said in an unsealed motion for summary judgment or an injunction from the federal claims court.
Boeing's CST-100 capsule won $4.2 billion and SpaceX's Dragon capsule won $2.6 billion of continued NASA commercial crew program funding. That includes two live missions each to the ISS starting in 2017.
SNC Space Systems' 7-seater Dream Chaser space plane was left out after winning more than $300 million from NASA in earlier rounds of competition.
NASA has not publicly explained why it didn't select Dream Chaser last month.
The publication Aviation Week reported it obtained an internal NASA memo that revealed some reasons. William Gerstenmaier, a NASA associate administrator, said in the memo that Dream Chaser was passed over because it wasn't as technically mature as the other craft and selecting it posed the most risk to NASA's ability meet it schedule for future flights to the ISS, the Aviation Week story said.
Being dropped from future commercial crew funding prompted SNC Space Systems to lay off about 90 employees on Sept. 24. It's believed a similar number of contract positions connected to Dream Chaser were phased out, too.
