NASA is
ready and willing to share the international space station (ISS) with other
U.S. government agencies and commercial firms once construction of the $100
billion orbital outpost is finished in 2010.
That is the
main thrust of a 14-page report NASA sent to Congress in late May outlining a
plan for operating the U.S. segment of ISS as a "national laboratory" supported
and used by entities other than NASA.
Congress
officially designated the U.S. side of the space station a national lab over a
year ago with passage of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The bill directed
NASA to seek new users for the space station and come back within a year with a
plan describing how the national lab would be operated.
While NASA
missed that deadline by five months, the finished report was nonetheless warmly
welcomed by the primary lawmaker behind the ISS-as-national-lab drive, Sen. Kay
Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).
"I am very
pleased with the work NASA has completed in preparing this report and
implementation plan for operating the international space station as a National
Laboratory," Hutchison said in a June 1 press release. "We now have a firm
foundation on which to plan for the full and complete use of the space station
as it was always intended."
NASA says
in the report that the agency would serve as "stewards of this new national
laboratory asset" covering the annual cost of maintaining and operating the ISS
"as long as the benefits to the nation are justifiable and the agency's ISS
operations' budget is reduced to permit both exploration and ISS operations."
NASA says
it could foresee letting a nonprofit or some other type of nongovernment entity
eventually manage commercial use of the station, but would continue to serve as
"the executive agent for other government uses of the ISS."
Jeff
Bingham, a senior adviser to Hutchison on space matters, said the report
"represents the emergence of a sea-change in thinking about the future of the
ISS."
Prior to
the report, Bingham wrote in a June 3 column for NASAspaceflight.com that NASA
had no clear commitment to the space station beyond 2016 and planned to use it
solely for research useful to space exploration.
Now,
Bingham said, NASA has promised to find out by 2014 what it would take to keep
the station up and running beyond its 2016 certified design life and is
reporting progress lining up other users.
Still, NASA
makes clear that its primary interest in ISS is research that helps expand the
boundaries of human space exploration, not solving problems back on Earth. The
report emphasizes that NASA remains "resolute in its plan to employ the ISS,
and other spacecraft as they become available, to advance research on human
physiology, in order to enable the long duration human space flight missions of
the future."
John
Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University
and a member of the NASA Advisory Council, said June 6 that designating the ISS
a national lab shows that the United States remains interested in getting a
return on its space station investment.
"NASA,
working with the NASA Advisory Council, is discussing with other government
users the research they might perform aboard the ISS. Having the ISS designated
by the Congress as a national laboratory is intended to support such
utilization efforts," Logsdon wrote in a June 6 e-mail. "So while the
designation might be more symbolic than representing a major change, it does
signal a desire to foster as widespread as possible utilization of this very
expensive facility."
The slender
report was produced by Mark Uhran, a NASA assistant associate administrator who
has long been involved in the agency's efforts to attract commercial users to
the space station.
A NASA spokesman
said neither Uhran or other officials were free to discuss the report until
Congress had a chance to review it and comment.
"All we can
really say for now is last week we sent Congress a plan describing how the U.S.
segment of the international space station could be used as a national
laboratory," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel wrote in a June 4 e-mail. "The report
details how the national lab could be operated, potential participation of
other parties, and a potential timeline for implementation."
"The idea
is that following the station's completion in 2010, NASA would still use it for
research that supports missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond," Beutel
continued. "But since the station was originally designed to accommodate
multiple, concurrent missions, NASA would seek partnerships with other
government agencies and commercial companies to use the U.S. segment of the
station to pursue research that isn't directly applicable to the NASA mission."
Beutel
would not release the report, but an electronic copy of it was posted on
NASAspaceflight.com and elsewhere.
In the
report, NASA says "initial encounters with U.S. government agencies have been
positive relative to their potential use of the ISS," adding that there is
"firm interest" from several agencies in using the station for "education,
human health related research and defense sciences research."
While no
specific new projects are mentioned, NASA says in the report that a December
2006 workshop it held with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to
identify ways to collaborate on space-related health research produced an
agreement to draft a memorandum of understanding "that will provide the
framework for NIH to encourage use of the ISS as a national laboratory for
research in related space and terrestrial physiology such as bone, muscle and
immunology."
In
addition, the report notes, NASA continues to make the ISS available to the
U.S. Defense Department's Space Test Program, which has used the space station
and other NASA spacecraft over the years to fly experimental payloads.
The report
also notes private sector interest in using the space station, but says any
such use would be kept in check by the continuing high cost of accessing the
station and the perceived investment risk of business plans involving a
facility that is still not fully assembled.
NASA says
it hopes its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which is
spending $500 million to foster cheaper transport options for the ISS, will
help address the first concern and that time and continued progress building
out the station will address the second concern.
One company
that appears undaunted by the investment risk is Spacehab, a Houston-based
commercial space company that has been struggling amid a reduced space shuttle
flight rate and cut backs on NASA-funded space station research. The company
announced this spring it intends to turn its financial picture around by
pursuing space-based research and manufacturing opportunities.
Spacehab
applauded the report. "This is one of the most exciting and welcome
announcements NASA could have made at this time," Thomas B. Pickens, Spacehab's
president and chief executive officer, said in a June 6 statement. "As the ISS
is nearing completion, NASA's leadership is staying true to the original vision
to provide a platform in space for public-private partnerships to promote major
advancements, enhancing and even saving lives here on Earth."
Other
highlights of the report include:
- NASA's
pledge to establish" a small project office within the Space Operations
Mission Directorate to work with other U.S. government agencies and the
private sector" interested in using ISS.
- NASA's
willingness to make available ISS flight hardware that s either already on
orbit or has been built and is either awaiting flight or not expected to
fly due to budget cut backs.
