Sierra Space named no customers and disclosed no contract values, but this week’s announcement sharpens the Sierra’s pivot toward national security work for Dream Chaser ahead of a debut still targeted for late this year.

Sierra Space said Tuesday it has signed national security and commercial customers to fly payloads on the inaugural flight of its Dream Chaser spaceplane, the long-delayed winged vehicle scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur.

Not Much Information

The Louisville, Colorado, company did not name the customers, disclose what the contracts are worth or say whether the agreements are firm contracts, letters of intent or something looser like a memorandum of understanding. Sierra Space said it is still finalizing the manifest with defense, civil, and commercial payloads.

One other thing that Sierra did not name was a launch date. That’s partially understandable, given that Vulcan is currently grounded with no set return date, but Sierra has pushed potential launch dates back at least ten years so far. Additionally, Sierra Space has not said that Dream Chaser has achieved its final readiness certification, so it is unclear whether Dream Chaser would be ready to go to space if Vulcan were to return to launch tomorrow. The company has said in the past that they are targeting Q4 2026, which starts at the end of this month, and with no rocket and no launch date, it looks like 2027 may be the realistic time frame for this critical first flight.

Remaining work described in the company’s most recent detailed updates included propulsion hot-fire testing and the national security modifications in Colorado.

The pitch is that one vehicle can serve three markets on one flight. “We’re not just talking about the multi-use space economy, we’re operating it,” said Dan Jablonsky, chief executive officer of Sierra Space. He described the spaceplane as a strategic national capability built on commercial money and commercial engineering.

The qualifier doing the work there is “commercial.” Boeing’s X-37B is a reusable spaceplane that lands on a runway, but the U.S. Space Force flies it rather than Boeing selling it as a commercial service. Currently, X-37B is on orbit on the OTV-8 mission, it has spent over a year operating in space following its summer 2025 lift-off from the Cape. Its return date, like the launch date for Dream Chaser, has not been released.