By Lee Roop
Rocket City? Huntsville topped its well-known nickname today with the right to call itself Space City.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it is issuing a license to the Huntsville-Madison Airport Authority to operate the Huntsville International Airport as a commercial space reentry site.
The license will let the airport offer landing services for the Sierra Space Dream Chaser spacecraft when it is returning to Earth from future NASA resupply missions to the International Space Station, the FAA announcement says. The license is valid for five years, and Sierra Space has said it plans to land Dream Chaser at least once at the Huntsville airport.
Sierra Space, or any other commercial space vehicle operator, will still need an FAA “Vehicle Operator License” from the FAA.
“Our region has been collaborating for years to become the first commercial airport to land a space launch vehicle,” said Port of Huntsville Board of Directors Chairman Mark McDaniel said when the airport applied for the license in 2021. “We are excited for this next phase of the application process and look forward to moving our community closer to this opportunity.”
The proposed re-entry site is Runway 18L-36R. That is the airport’s eastern runway with a length of 10,001 feet. Dream Chaser will be able to land “anywhere that has a suitable 10,000 ft. runway capable of handling a typical large passenger airplane,” Sierra Space says. The airport also has a second runway, 18R-36L, that is 12,600 feet long.
Sierra Space, a spinoff company, was formed by its parent company Sierra Nevada Corp., because Sierra Nevada said there is so much potential in space transport that it needed a sole-focus entity. Sierra Space is “developing the Dream Chaser, a reusable reentry vehicle capable of carrying payloads to and from low Earth orbit, including delivering supplies to the International Space Station under (NASA’s) Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract,” the FAA said.
There are space ports around the county including some that can launch and land spacecraft. Huntsville International Airport is the 14th FAA-licensed commercial spaceport, but it will be the only commercial airport that can serve as a landing site, Tucker said. Tucker said the airport would pursue a mission with Sierra Space if it got the license.
The Sierra Space spacecraft will launch into space atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, the FAA said. ULA builds its rockets in Decatur, Ala.
