Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS)

Orbital and NASA’s Johnson Space Center are jointly developing a new space transportation system in a three-year cooperative program to support the International Space Station (ISS). The COTS program will involve full-scale development and flight demonstration of a commercial cargo delivery system. The COTS system will consist of:

• Taurus II, a new medium-class launch vehicle being developed by Orbital
• Cygnus, an advanced maneuvering spacecraft, and
• Several interchangeable modules for pressurized and unpressurized cargo.

The COTS demonstration mission is scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of 2010. Subject to NASA’s needs, operational COTS missions would follow beginning in the first half of 2011. Orbital will be capable of conducting two to eight operational missions a year by 2012, together with other non-COTS Taurus II launches.

Orbital will carry out design, manufacturing and test of the new Taurus II launch vehicle in Dulles, VA and Chandler, AZ; the company’s development, production and integration of its Cygnus spacecraft and cargo modules will be done in Dulles and Greenbelt, MD. Early COTS launches are planned at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, while integrated mission operations will be conducted from control centers in Dulles and Houston.

For NASA, COTS will provide a U.S.-produced and-operated automated cargo delivery service for ISS support, to complement Russian, European and Japanese ISS cargo vehicles.

The Taurus II launch vehicle will have a payload capacity of 4,750 to 6,250 Kg to low-Earth orbits (depending on altitude and inclination). The Cygnus spacecraft will be capable of delivering up to 2,300 Kg of pressurized or unpressurized cargo to the ISS, and will be capable of returning up to 1,200 Kg of cargo from ISS to Earth.

For more information:
COTS NASA
Taurus II Page
Hi-Res Images
Wallops Flight Facility

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