The Trump administration has taken another small step toward its larger leap to commercialize space laboratory activities, even as NASA struggles to put current commercialization plans in place.
A new White House memo released (August 14) said research with low-Earth orbit “on new platforms” – commercial facilities that could succeed the International Space Station – should be a priority. It was published as part of the annual joint initiative to identify budget priorities in research and development, between the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Although this year’s memo has very similar ratings to that released last year, according to SpaceNews there is one key sentence that shows the new priority on low Earth Earth orbit (LEO) research.
“Microgravity research in biological and physical science on new platforms in Low Earth Orbit is important to enable human missions in the longer term, and may have practical benefits for life on Earth,” states the memo, which you can view here.
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Similar to last year, the memo says that LEO is part of the Trump administration’s greater effort to bring people back to the moon after 2024, this time accompanied by a fleet of private cars built under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Services Program. The moon is positioned as a “proving ground for future human missions to Mars”, just as the White House stated in its 2019 memo, but the new memo adds a line referring to “exploration and long-term use” “as another reason for exploring the lunar surface.
The new memo has also added “orbital waste management” – such as tracking and removing potentially dangerous “space junk” that remains in Earth’s orbit – to the list of items to prioritize in research and development. Otherwise, the wish list is very similar to last year, with items including advanced drive and use of resource in situ (living from the available resources in another world).
In line with the administration’s priorities, NASA has moved the International Space Station (ISS) to even more commercialization than today. Just last year, it included a plan to open the facility to private astronauts, and the competing selection of Houston-based company Axiom Space to build at least one habitable private module to add to the orchestra complex. This new work adds to ongoing attempts to conduct commercial experiments on the ISS as part of an agreement between NASA and the Houston-based airline Nanoracks.
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Congress has been cool to this day for NASA’s commercialization efforts. In fiscal year 2020, Congress provided $ 15 million for LEO commercialization, but a tenth of the $ 150 million requested by NASA, SpaceNews said. For fiscal year 2021, NASA asked for $ 150 million again, but the House Spending version of the bill only authorized $ 15 million. (The Senate has not yet finalized its version.)
In addition to research and development activities, NASA has increased its private car use on the ISS in recent years. This year, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission successfully flew the first commercial crew to space and home again, with more than a decade of development and testing; Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut taxi has been tested in space on a uniform mission, but faced several issues that need further development.
The ISS also accepts regular deliveries of private taxis from SpaceX and Northrop Grumman under commercial delivery agreements; a new deal will soon be introduced on Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser. add to the fleet of available cargo ships. The first launch of Dream Chaser’s spaceship “Tenacity” will be in late 2021.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
