NASA Wants Private And Commercial Use of the ISS

For years, the International Space Station (ISS) served as the seat of science in space, regulated by the government. But NASA is currently looking for ideas to encourage and increase the ISS commercial use.

.@NASA seeks ideas to boost commercial access to space station and foster space marketplace. https://t.co/bSzVKEtEjg pic.twitter.com/DMaWD4nWVL

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) July 23, 2016

This is a good call for businesses involved in commercial space technology and space flight services to explore the low-Earth orbit and to develop their product with the ISS in mind. This will turn the government-based space station into a business hub in space, according to Engadget.

This move is an opportunity for commercial space technology service companies. It is not every day that NASA welcomes commercial space groups to use the ISS strategically located in space to accommodate other companies. Currently, there are about 300 active experiments happening on board and NASA thinks the ISS can handle more activities involving commercial use.

A request for information (RFI) released this month wants to know how the ISS can be used to boost other activities for commercial use and in turn, create a self-sustaining marketplace in the low-Earth orbit (LEO). Because of that, NASA has now started looking for potential contracts and agreement structures to explore and enable commercial use of the ISS.

"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," William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate said in a press release.

"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," Gerstenmaier added in the same release. 

The request for information is to test whether the private sector is interested in the space business hub and it will give both the companies and NASA an idea how the future partnerships can be formed, according to Gizmag.

The result of the RFI will help NASA to develop a sustainable marketplace in LEO.