spacetoday.net: NASA to offer lab space on ISS

Posted: Wed, Jun 27, 2007, 6:03 AM ET (1003 GMT)
ISS illustration (NASA)

NASA plans to allow other government agencies and private organizations to use excess laboratory space on the International Space Station for no charge once the station is complete. In a report provided to Congress this month, NASA officials said the agency anticipates that half of the lab space on the station will be available to other users. No fees will be changed for the use of the space itself, but users will have to pay for transportation as well as any time used by the station's crew to operate the experiments. NASA has approached a number of government agencies about their use of the station, but so far on the National Institutes of Health has expressed an interest. The ISS could end up in competition with private space stations planned by Bigelow Aerospace, although NASA officials said that they believed that the technical capabilities of the ISS versus Bigelow's inflatable stations would be different enough to avoid head-to-head competition.