ICE Cubes—International Commercial Experiment Service for Fast-Track, Simple and Affordable Access to Space for Research—Status and Evolution

Abstract

We are at the dawn of a new commercial spaceflight era. Space is no longer in the domain of agencies and governments only, but is being democratized. Everyone can now access space at reasonable costs and the barriers that limit the access to space are being torn down. Upon the formal signature of the commercial partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) in June 2017, the International Commercial Experiment Cubes (ICE Cubes) service has been established as the first European service to provide fast, simple and affordable access to the International Space Station (ISS) for research, technology development, capacity building as well as education and inspiration. The ICE Cubes service provides access to space for a wide range of user groups: scientists/research institutes for fundamental and applied sciences; industrial companies for their research and development (R&D) activities; technology providers for in-orbit testing, validation and demonstration of technologies and processes; emerging space-faring nations for capacity building and schools for educational experiments in the STE(A)M areas. Past studies show that the potential of microgravity is high and the interest is significant. However, the level of awareness is low. Unless previously involved with spaceflight, the number of industrial and academic researchers and developers seeking solutions in microgravity is low. Therefore, significant effort is being made to extend the users’ network and to establish value propositions for specific R&D areas to take advantage of the space environment. To this purpose, dedicated state-of-the-art diagnostics will be established as part of the ICE Cubes program to further enable the performance of R&D activities in space. At the time of writing, the first ICE Cubes facility has been launched to the ISS and has been successfully commissioned. The ICE Cubes service is therefore as of today fully operative with the first batch of research experiment cubes being operated. The ICE Cubes service for the ISS is the first step of a space access service scenario and capabilities that will potentially include free flyers, external platforms, lunar landers/rovers and post ISS infrastructures. A marketing strategy has been elaborated to take steps forward to further evolve and enhance the ICE Cubes service by expanding from access to the ISS to a range of other space platforms, based on related efforts to increase awareness, arouse inspiration, consolidate and establish partnerships. This chapter provides a status of the ICE Cubes Service for access to ISS and on the establishment of the service for each of the user groups and presents the status and the evolution into a wider space access service and capabilities scenarios.