Promotion of Industrial ISS Utilization by the German Space Agency

Abstract

The International Space Station is a global cooperative programme between the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe for the joint development, operation and utilization of a permanently inhabited space station in low Earth orbit. Germany contributes 41% of the overall development costs for the European part of the ISS. During recent decades Germany has been strongly involved in manned space flight programmes and has gained extensive experience in microgravity sciences, engineering and management. Therefore Germany is aiming at a leading role in ISS utilization within Europe and ESA.

The ISS is a new orbital structure with the possibilities of longterm experimentation, servicing of hardware, short term and regular access, availibility of more energy and data transmission, realtime video and robotics. These new boundary conditions are very promising prerequisites, not only for the well established space community, but also for industrial and commercial activities in space by non-space industries. The ISS will become a tool like any other large scale laboratory facility on Earth. To make this new research facility known among non-space industry researchers and to get them “onboard” the DLR has initiated the project “Promotion of industrial users of the ISS”. Within this, the relevant information is distributed via adequate media, e.g. workshops, periodical Newsletter, Internet, and potential users are addressed via national associations of sciences and of industrial companies in a framework of events (symposia, meetings, workshops). In the early utilization phase, ESA and the national agencies intend to provide for the costs of the flight, logistics and the required system operations. In principle the user has to provide his experiment hardware and to cover the expenses for the related ground-based research. Industrial requirements for ISS use are identified and have to be implemented according to the jointly to be agreed access rules of the ISS partners. Administrative and legal questions, e.g. proprietary rights, confidentiality, charging policies, advertisement rules, costs and schedules, have to be settled by clear and transparent international agreements. Within such a framework the ISS can be a valuable tool for profit-oriented industrial and commercial ventures.