NASA’s ISS Commercialization Strategy Draws Interest From Companies

Several companies have expressed interest in NASA’s new commercialization plan for the International Space Station, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

One of the firms supporting the strategy is Bigelow Aerospace, which paid deposits to SpaceX to perform four Crew Dragon manned missions to the ISS. Such flights seek to meet one element of the commercialization strategy, which aims to facilitate the use of commercial crew spacecraft to carry out two private ISS missions a year beginning in 2020.

A competition for a docking port on the orbiting laboratory’s Harmony module serves as another element of the space agency’s low-Earth orbit commercialization strategy and is likely to draw interest from companies like NanoRacks, Bigelow and Sierra Nevada.

“NanoRacks believes it is well-positioned to facilitate the further growth of the emerging low Earth orbit marketplace,” said CEO Jeffrey Manber. “For now, we are analyzing the right pathways for us to compete for these new opportunities, both in terms of hardware and services.”