Tech Briefs Magazine - August 2022 - 20

Low-Earth Orbit
very beneficial. That coupled with the
continued government interest and foundation
funding has really allowed the
American presence to maintain in space. "
Retiring the ISS
LEO provides an ideal environment for
crew training, research, and hardware
testing for exploration use. The ISS will
be the last government-led destination in
LEO. The overarching strategic goal of
NASA is to have the commercial LEO destinations
(CLDs) ready after the ISS retires
in 2030. These CLDs are expected to
launch before 2030, allowing NASA to
have continued access to train astronauts
and conduct science in LEO.
The International Space Station in low-Earth orbit. (Image: NASA)
to carry out what would previously have
been NASA missions, such as carrying
people and payload to the ISS, and to
cede the direction of activities in LEO
to commercial space providers.
" If you look at the agency's most recent
strategic plan, we have a goal in there that
says NASA will work to lay the foundation
for America to maintain a constant human
presence in LEO, enabled by a commercial
market, " said Misty Snopkowski,
NASA's Program Executive for the Commercial
LEO Development program,
which works to create a robust commercial
LEO economy by enabling the development
of commercially owned and operated
LEO destinations.
" This whole commercialization of LEO
has actually been something that NASA
has been working on for over 10 years, "
she said. " We have had a lot of success with
cargo transportation and now also with
the Commercial Crew Program. NASA
has been working on that transportation
piece, to get that capability in place from a
commercial perspective. Now what we are
trying to do is take that same model and
create these Commercial LEO Destinations, "
added Snopkowski.
" We have entered an interesting time
where I think private contributions to the
space arena have had quite an explosive
and expansive impact, " said Tom McCarthy,
Co-Founder and VP of Business Development
at Motiv Space Systems (Pasadena,
CA). " If it wasn't for private
contributions, we wouldn't have some of
the access to space or the data or processing
capabilities. There is huge involvement
from the private sector that's been
This transition of LEO operations to
the private sector will yield efficiencies
in the long term, enabling NASA to shift
resources toward other objectives. " A
part of our overall strategy is, as the station
is finishing up the rest of its life, we
are also investing in industry to make
these new commercial LEO destinations,
so that we have that seamless transition
between ISS and these new capabilities
that will be commercially owned
and operated, " said Snopkowski.
To fulfill this goal, NASA has entered
into a contract for commercial modules
to be attached to a space station docking
port and awarded space act agreements
for designing three free-flying commercial
space stations. The four commercial
LEO destination partner organizations
working with the agency are: Axiom
Space, Blue Origin, Nanoracks, and
Northrop Grumman.
Early renderings of the crew's quarters with plush padded chambers and a view of the Earth on
Axiom's commercial space station. (Image: Axiom Space)
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Through this model, NASA would be a
customer of the commercial space industry,
allowing it to save on costs and focus
on research and exploration. " This is part
of NASA's vision of moving out into deep
space, " said Marshall Smith, Senior Vice
President of Space Systems at Nanoracks
(Houston, TX). " In getting out of LEO,
NASA is freeing up more money to allow
more deep space activities like going to
the Moon and then eventually developing
that area, and then of course, going to
Mars and other areas, " he said.
There has always been interest, believes
Matt Ondler, Chief Technology Officer at
Axiom Space, but now it's possible to
build a commercial space station due to
several reasons. " One, there are lots of
different launch providers and transportation
services have matured, but then
also just advances in technology in general.
We are going to leverage advances in
computing power and other technologies
Tech Briefs, August 2022

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Tech Briefs Magazine - August 2022

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