NASA announced Feb. 2 that it intends to exercise a 2001 contract with Kirkland, Wash.-based Kistler Aerospace Corp. to buy pre- and post-flight data from demonstrations of the companys K-1 reusable launch vehicle. The award, according to NASA, is not for actual launch services to the station, but for the data from a series of flight demonstrations meant to show that a recoverable launcher can reliably approach an orbiting platform such as the space station and safely attach to it.

Such a capability, NASA officials say, has applications beyond space station re-supply missions. NASA also sees the flight data as potentially useful to the pursuit of the agencys new space exploration goals, including a return to the moon.

NASAs 2005 budget request, released Feb. 2, includes $10 million for a flight demonstration initiative to pursue launch services with emerging launch systems.

Kistler had been lobbying NASA for months to pay for a demonstration flight designed to prove that the K-1 could serve as a space station re-supply vehicle. About a dozen NASA officials, led by the agencys chief rocket buyer, traveled to Kistlers Kirkland, Wash.-based headquarters in mid-July for a briefing on how the K-1 could be brought into service as a space station resupply vehicle in as little as two years with no financial risk to NASA.

According to the notice NASA posted on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site, the agency has a requirement for data to demonstrate the ability of commercial launch systems to support [the international space station] with up-and down-mass capability as soon as practical. NASA wants this data, according to the notice, by the end of 2006.

NASA spokeswoman Melissa Mathews said as much as $54.2 million of the contract is payable to Kistler before conducting its first launch. The remaining $173.2 million, Mathews said, is tied to the successful conduct of flight demonstrations.

Kistler is not the only private company trying to sell NASA on commercial space station resupply services that have a potential to help with the agencys new exploration goals. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been studying re-supply concepts that would take advantage of existing expendable rockets, as have a number of smaller companies, including Seattle, Wash.-based Andrews Space & Technology and Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Constellation Services International Inc. All four companies had been developing competing resupply concepts under NASAs Alternate Access to Station project. Those study contracts expired Feb.1.

Kistler has the advantage of having an existing contract with NASA for flight demonstrations and a launch vehicle that is designed and partially built.

Kistler still holds a contract NASA awarded in 2001 under the now defunct Space Launch Initiative to provide the U.S. space agency with flight results from a series of proposed test flights and technology demonstrations. The contract included more than a dozen options NASA could exercise through the end of 2005, including buying flight data from an autonomous rendezvous demonstration of the K-1.

The K-1 is a two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket that is designed to be fully reusable. Although originally designed as a commercial launcher for a low Earth orbit satellite market that largely failed to materialize, Kistler officials believe the K-1 could easily deliver a cargo-laden upper stage to the international space station.

Numerous components of the vehicle have been built and tested. But by all accounts, Kistler still requires several hundred million dollars to complete the vehicle and conduct an initial launch.

The company also filed last summer to re-organize its finances under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The filing listed claims against Kistler totaling $604.3 million, including $99 million owed to Aerojet, the Sacramento, Calif.-based propulsion company supplying Russian-designed engines for the K-1.

George Mueller, Kistlers chief executive officer, was not immediately available for comment Tuesday afternoon.