Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of SNC's Space Systems unit, confirmed Friday (Sept. 26) that the company had filed a protest of NASA's Sept. 16 award of two Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts to Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

SNC maintains that its Dream Chaser system would offer substantial cost savings over the combination NASA selected with a similar level of technical capability. In a statement released late Sept. 26, the company said that one of the two companies selected "would result in a substantial increased cost to the public despite near equivalent technical and past performance scores." The statement did not identify that company, but Boeing received a significantly larger CCtCap award than SpaceX: $4.2 billion versus $2.6 billion.