CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Among the precious
payloads set to launch tomorrow aboard the space shuttle Discovery is one of
the first experiments as part of a NASA plan to use the International Space
Station (ISS) as a U.S. National Laboratory.
The plan, put into
action by the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, will open up about half of
the outpost's U.S. science facilities for outside use by non-NASA
researchers by 2010.
As part of the
initiative, NASA announced today new partnerships with the University of Colorado at Boulder's Bioserve Space Technologies Center and with SPACEHAB of
Webster, Texas, and Zero Gravity Inc. of Stevensville, Md. The pairings will
further NASA's initiative to make ISS research facilities available to non-NASA
scientists, said John J. Uri, deputy manager of NASA's Space Station Payloads
Office, in a briefing today here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Fla.
"With the NASA
Authorization Act of 2005, it has really opened up the door to multiple other
users besides NASA and besides NASA scientists to utilize this facility," said
Louis S. Stodieck, director of Bioserve Space Technologies and a professor of
aerospace engineer sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "As a
laboratory, it is absolutely unique and unparalleled."
An experiment from SPACEHAB
is already packed aboard Discovery, which is slated
to launch Saturday at 5:02 p.m. EDT (2102 GMT). The project aims to develop
a vaccine against salmonella by taking advantage of the effects of null gravity
on bacterial virulence.
NASA says it has
already seen interest from other government agencies, universities and private commercial
companies in using the new orbiting
national laboratory.
"I'm sure you've heard
the expression, 'Build it and they will come,'" Uri said. "Well, we're still
building it, and they're already coming."
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