High above the Utah desert a high-altitude balloon released Sierra Space’s compact reentry vehicle carrying a bottle of whiskey and a software-defined radio. Both items reached the ground intact after falls from 35,000 feet and 68,500 feet, and recovery crews located them quickly. Those flights in May formed the first live tests in nearly two years for Sierra Space Ghost, a decelerator built to move cargo from orbit to any point on Earth in roughly ninety minutes.
Sierra Space ultimately unveiled Ghost in April 2024, following years of development behind the scenes. Their engineers created the current version to carry approximately 150 kilos of payload and gave it a five-year shelf life in space, allowing you to prepare loaded vehicles weeks in advance. When a call comes in, the vehicle spins around, its little motor slows it down to approximately 7,000 meters per second, and the atmospheric drag takes care of the rest. These guys came up with thermal protection packs that pack down compact for launch and then expand to shield whatever is inside from temperatures of up to 2000°F. As you descend, the shield falls off, and a parafoil directs the package to a landing zone about 100 meters broad.
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The first several drops in Florida in February 2024 were simply a test to determine how this thing handles the final stretch of flight. One package fell from 2,000 feet without a parachute, giving us a decent indication of the impact. Another landed from 4,000 feet with a parachute. The third simply dropped the shield and let the parachute take it in, since that test provided really useful data that they utilized to fine-tune how they placed the center of gravity and controlled everything as it transitioned from hypersonic to subsonic speed.
The US military sat up and took notice quickly. The Air Force Research Lab awarded Sierra Space a fixed-price contract in October 2024 to research scaling up the design to 5 or 10 metric tons as part of their Rocket Experimentation for Global Agile Logistics program. This all contributes to a larger picture of transporting critical supplies to the correct places faster than traditional airlift can, particularly in hotspot areas where large transport planes cannot fly without being shot at. Sierra Space is also receiving a lot of interest from the United States Transportation Command in terms of how the entire recovery, deployment, and day-to-day operations process will operate once these vehicles return. The business has learnt a few lessons from its Dream Chaser spaceplane, which should translate well to this smaller, more compact design.
Sierra Space recently conducted balloon testing, which provided them with valuable real-world experience. After receiving the call from the United States Space Command for the Apollo Nexus exercise, they created a completely new vehicle from the ground up in less than four months. Sierra Nevada provided the radio for them to test whether the electronics would withstand the tough outdoor environment. Whiskey was employed to represent the liquid cargo load. Erik Daehler, senior VP, stated that both cargoes arrived without incident and that the ground crew was able to recover them within a reasonable time frame, adding that the exercise was all about getting all of the US forces and allies to collaborate on logistics under duress.
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