out Tuesday by the National Research Council.The proposed organization, which would be similar to the institute that now manages research for the Hubble Space Telescope, would represent all commercial and non-profit research interests in the ISS program, and would eventually decide which experiments are suitable for the station.
A NASA spokesman said the space agency welcomed the report, and that it already was working on plans to move the station's research use outside of NASA. Both the National Research Council and NASA agree the space agency should remain in control of construction, operations, and overall policy.
In its report, the council called for "the establishment of an NGO [non-governmental organization], under the direction of institutions able to represent the broad research community, that would manage the research" aboard the station.
The organization probably would be similar to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., which governs research and approves observations for the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, an NRC spokesman said.
The council report pressed for NASA to help set up the new organization immediately, so that it could help NASA exchange ideas with researchers during the final construction phase of the orbiting platform in 2001 or 2002. NASA agrees with that proposal.
"We would not propose to let a whole lot of grass grow underneath our feet on this," said NASA spokesman Brian Welch. "You can trace this concept back to 1995...It's become a part of our overall space station commercialization plan. Establishing its exact nature (is) one reason we welcome the NRC take on this. It's a fairly elaborate, complicated thing to go off and do."
The council recommended that, initially at least, peer review and selection of experiments should remain with NASA as part of a gradual phase-in of the new organization. That group would act as the single point of contact for the research community and would control the station's research budget.
The same organization, the council said, should also "be responsible for fostering commercial research uses of the ISS as well as research by the academic science and engineering communities."
"We also have been studying the concept of an NGO to run the commercial aspects of the space station and we think that this is a very valuable report," NASA's Welch said. "It gives us the ability to go off and have some continued discussions" with NASA's advisory groups, Congress, and the White House.
It is too early to decide how the funding for such a center would be handled, Welch said, because there are 15 other international partners in the station project and others interested in research likely will be asked to help shoulder the costs. The Space Telescope Science Institute, by contrast, is funded entirely by NASA.
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