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LOUISVILLE, CO, Mar 18, 2022 - (JCN Newswire) - Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company with 1,100 employees, more than 500 missions and over 30 years of space flight heritage, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), a leading company in the space development industry in Japan, announced that the companies have jointly signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
The MOU agreement outlines plans for Sierra Space and MHI to collaborate on a wide range of technologies regarding the development of Orbital Reef, a commercially developed, owned and operated space station to be built in low Earth orbit (LEO) by investors Sierra Space and Blue Origin.

Sierra Space and MHI have commenced work on incorporating MHI expertise in the development of Orbital Reef, bringing in technologies and expertise from MHI's years of experience with the International Space Station (ISS) program.

"At Sierra Space we are building a platform in space to benefit life on Earth," said Tom Vice, Sierra Space CEO. "We are proud to formalize a long-standing relationship with MHI and look forward to leveraging its considerable technological expertise, as we continue building Orbital Reef and the next generation of space transportation."

"MHI is very excited to collaborate with Sierra Space and use MHI's technologies and experience earned over years to contribute to the development of Orbital Reef, the program led by Sierra Space, Blue Origin and their international partners," said Tomoe Nishigaya, Vice President and Senior General Manager of Space Systems at MHI. "We look forward to further collaboration with Sierra Space as to how MHI's technologies, products and services may provide better experience for users and customers of the space station. Additionally, MHI plans to cooperate with JAXA and other aerospace companies in Japan, leveraging strong relationships built through participation to the ISS program."

About Sierra Space

Sierra Space products and programs are working towards a more accessible space economy. The company is rapidly advancing toward the launch of the world's only winged commercial spaceplane, the Dream Chaser. As the next generation of space transportation, the Dream Chaser will perform cargo supply and return missions for NASA, set to begin in late 2022, delivering up to 12,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) at a time. The return journey will carry critical data, generated by ISS researcher experiments, enabling earth-bound scientists to benefit from much faster access to these unique results. Dream Chaser is a reusable spaceplane, uniquely capable of a smooth 1.5 low-g re-entry for crew and cargo transportation with the ability to land on existing commercial runways worldwide.

Sierra Space is the developer of the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) Habitat, a modular, three-story commercial habitation and science platform. The unique structure will provide opportunities for multiple businesses including manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other sectors, to optimize zero gravity benefits. The LIFE Habitat will be able to be deployed in low-Earth orbit, on the lunar surface, or lunar orbit, and as a transport vehicle to Mars. Both Dream Chaser and LIFE Habitat will launch using conventional rocket propulsion systems.

The Dream Chaser spaceplane and LIFE platform are central components of the joint partnership Orbital Reef commercial space station and mixed-use business park being developed in partnership with Blue Origin.

About MHI Group

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group is one of the world's leading industrial groups, spanning energy, logistics & infrastructure, industrial machinery, aerospace and defense. MHI Group combines cutting-edge technology with deep experience to deliver innovative, integrated solutions that help to realize a carbon neutral world, improve the quality of life and ensure a safer world. For more information, please visit www.mhi.com or follow our insights and stories on spectra.mhi.com.


Copyright 2022 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.jcnnewswire.comSierra Space announced that the companies have jointly signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

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Space, the final frontier. We can all admire its beauty and relish in the excitement of what companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin are doing for space travel. However, few are aware that the space industry is not just composed of countries trying to launch satellites or billionaire backed launch companies - it's actually a $500B industry full of many small and medium-sized players helping to develop new ways to generate value out of the vast potential of space.

For most to get "in" is the biggest challenge. Although the industry is growing rapidly, currently, there are few ways to interact with it.

Enter Copernic Space and Lunar Outpost. A goal of Copernic Space is to provide a digital standard for the wider commercial market to buy payload in order to send something into space, in this case, the Moon, while turning it into an asset itself that's fractionalizable and enables the retail market to participate economically in space for the first time. 

While Copernic Space creates the marketplace and ecosystem, Lunar Outpost, an industry-leading private space technology company, is helping to establish a lasting presence in space, starting with planetary rovers that carry payloads like instrumentation, sensors, and other physical assets during missions on the lunar surface. 

Copernic Space and Lunar Outpost have launched the Private Sale portion of the first-ever tokenized space payload sale. Hosted on the Copernic Space platform, the private sale enables companies and individuals to purchase space in Lunar Outpost's M1 MAPP Rover and send their cargo on it to the Moon in late 2022 by acquiring a tradable NFT(Non-Fungible Token). The NFT represents the ownership of their space asset on the Rover and can be fractionalized and resold on the Copernic Space platform to the retail market, creating the first space asset market. 

“This launch creates new revenue models and streamlines commercialization for the space economy while empowering the market to acquire and own space assets for the first time. The upcoming Public Sale will represent the true creation of a space asset market and a democratized one at that.” said Grant Blaisdell, CEO and Co-Founder of Copernic Space.

Lunar Outpost's M1 MAPP rover has a total of 3.475kg of space available in the tokenized sale. The payload will be onboard a rugged platform capable of conquering the extreme environments it will face on the lunar surface. Its navigation will be autonomous and teleoperated and will also come equipped with Nokia's 4G/LTE communications capabilities and video capture. 

“Selling payload in token form presents customers with a new avenue for accessing space. In this case, not only the purchase itself but also the method of purchase is important. We hope that it leads to more payloads operating on the Moon, as well as an expansion of the number of people interested in being a part of space missions.” stated Julian Cyrus, co-founder and COO of Lunar Outpost.

The private sale is the beginning of Lunar Outpost and Copernic Space proving a new economic model for space in the digital age. It will bring the mass market with it during the Public Sale and mark the beginning of the tokenization of space as Copernic Space has multiple commercial launches on the platform slated over the next year.

About Copernic Space

From payload space to venture tokens, Copernic Space is the marketplace to buy, sell, and manage space assets. By enabling access to space assets and ventures using blockchain technology, Copernic Space unlocks the benefits of the space economy to the mass market and provides space ventures the capability to better commercialize assets and attain financing. www.copernicspace.com

About Lunar Outpost

Lunar Outpost is an advanced robotics company developing technologies that have both Earth and space applications. Lunar Outpost recently made history as the first commercial company to collect payment for a space resources contract, which NASA Administrator Bill Nelson awarded at the Space Symposium in August. This payment was for a mission currently slated to send the first rover in human history to the lunar south pole on a 2022 mission to deploy Nokia's 4G lunar network. Additionally, Lunar Outpost took part in the first-ever ISRU demonstration on another planet when MOXIE, onboard the Perseverance rover, produced oxygen on Mars.