Dream Chaser spaceplane gets landing approval ahead of first flight

The Federal Aviation Administration has licensed Sierra Space to bring its Dream Chaser spaceplane back from orbit and land it on the runway at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, clearing one of the last regulatory steps before the long-delayed vehicle’s first flight.

The FAA said on November 9 that it had issued a vehicle operator license for Dream Chaser, a reusable winged spacecraft that glides back through the atmosphere and lands like an airplane, and Sierra Space announced the approval on X the following day. The license is valid for five years and allows up to four reentries a year, provided the vehicle’s configuration and mission profile stay the same.

The approval covers the landing half of the mission, since Dream Chaser’s first flight is planned to launch from Florida aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket before ending on the runway at Vandenberg, and neither Sierra Space nor the FAA has announced a launch date.

Vandenberg was not always the primary landing site. When the FAA began its environmental review in 2024, Sierra Space proposed landing Dream Chaser at the former Space Shuttle runway at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and listed Vandenberg only as a contingency site, while the license announced this week names Vandenberg.

The first vehicle, named Tenacity, is designed to carry about 5,500 kg (12,100 pounds) of cargo to orbit and return up to 1,850 kg (4,080 pounds), according to figures in the FAA’s environmental assessment, and its wings fold so that it fits inside the rocket’s nose cone at launch. Sierra Space says the spaceplane keeps forces on returning cargo below 1.5 times Earth’s gravity and can land on any runway long enough for a Boeing 737, which matters for delicate experiments or equipment that a hard capsule splashdown could damage.

The flight’s purpose has shifted since Sierra Space won a NASA contract in 2016 to resupply the International Space Station. After repeated delays, including problems with the vehicle’s propulsion system, NASA and Sierra Space revised the agreement in September 2025 so that Dream Chaser’s debut would be an independent “free flyer” mission that does not dock with the station, leaving NASA free to order resupply flights later if the demonstration succeeds.

In September, Sierra Space signed national security and commercial customers to fly payloads on that first mission alongside NASA cargo, although the company has not identified the customers or the payloads and has said it is still finalizing the manifest.

Sierra Space has described the flight as targeted for late 2026, with launch timing tied to the availability of a Vulcan Centaur, and with seven weeks left in the year the company has not confirmed whether that target still holds.