Commercial Research Results from the International Space Station

As part of NASA's mission of enabling commercial opportunities in space, the Space Product Development Office has sponsored the flight of twelve commercial payloads to the International Space Station (ISS) during calendar year 2002. These twelve follow seven commercial payloads flown to the ISS during 2001. Many of these payloads, which were among the first users of this new laboratory, built upon successful commercial investigations that previously were restricted to the limited flight duration of the Space Shuttle. While the majority of early commercial use of the ISS is in the area of biotechnology, there is a significant shift towards commercial materials research over the next two years. New commercial payloads such as Space-DRUMS and Vulcan will advance commercial materials research on the ISS. Commercial flight hardware is available to the broader NASA community in order to provide benefit to the entire NASA microgravity program, and the scientific community on a space available basis and at very low cost. The first commercial operations on the ISS provides not only a needed capability to the commercial development of space program, it will also augment the science program as well.