The company developed a new reusable spacecraft to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station (ISS), based on decades of lifting body programs.

Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS) program, the company designed Dream Chaser with industrial partner Lockheed Martin.

This system features the Shooting Star, an expendable cargo module with solar panels, and the Dream Chaser, a reusable lifting body capable of returning 1,750 kg (3,860 lb) of pressurized cargo to Earth while undergoing maximum re-entry forces of 1.5 g.[4][5] The Dream Chaser design is derived from NASA's HL-20 Personnel Launch System spaceplane concept from the 1990s, which in turn is descended from over 20,000 hours and six decades of experimental lifting body vehicles, including the X-20 Dyna-Soar, Northrop M2-F2, Northrop M2-F3, Northrop HL-10, Martin X-24A and X-24B, and Martin X-23 PRIME.

Its design is similar to the Exoliner cargo container shown in Lockheed Martin's Jupiter proposal for NASA's CRS-2.

The Dream Chaser is mated with the Shooting Star at the launch site, and mission operations are conducted from control centers in Colorado and Houston, Texas.