NASA wants increased commercial use for Space Station

Given the International Space Station’s unique capabilities, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is looking for creative input to allow for more commercial applications.

A request for information (RFI) was released this month to understand which unique ISS capabilities can be leveraged to boost commercial activity and create a self-sustaining marketplace in low-Earth orbit (LEO). NASA is also looking for recommendations from industries for potential contracts or agreement structures that will enable ease of use for the space station’s capabilities, according to a NASA press release.

“The space station was designed with what we thought was a full set of utilization capabilities. However, we are finding that industry is more innovative than we’d imagined and has ideas to use station in ways we never envisioned for research or commercial activities,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. “We’re asking industry to help us understand how best to offer these unique capabilities, such as unused attachment ports or non-standard attachment sites, to commercial users. I’m looking forward to seeing how the private sector responds.”

Apart from the ongoing US-run experiments on board the ISS, NASA is looking to get more out of the space station as the resource that it is for the international community. The results of the RFI will be used to guide strategic planning to meet the agency’s objective for developing a robust, self-sustaining marketplace in LEO. Alfred Bayle