ESA – ISS is open for business, what about NASA?

Nature 28 June 2001

Europe implements package deals for space station

SALLY GOODMAN

[PARIS] Industrial researchers wanting to use the International Space Station (ISS) are being offered cut-price passage by the European Space Agency (ESA). The agency is offering rack space attached to the craft at prices from US$60,000 per day.

ESA officials think they can attract commercial customers — who might want to use the gravity-free station for anything from materials research to drug development — by offering a more accessible and tailored service than NASA.

NASA only offers full equipment racks containing about one cubic metre of space in its Destiny laboratory for $20.8 million for a full year. But at the ISS Forum 2001 in Berlin earlier this month, ESA published its price list, offering smaller lockers on its Columbus laboratory for as little as three months, with rates starting at $715,000 for that period. External racks can be used for even shorter periods, at $60,000 per day. The facilities should be available from 2005.

Jochen Graf, head of the ESA department responsible for selling commercial access, insists that the agency is not competing with NASA. "We are trying to expand the market and to move away from the classic space-science and industry customers," he says. European customers want smaller racks and time slots, Graf adds. "Three months is a good time period for customers using biological material who may want to bring down fresh material at regular intervals," he says.

ESA and NASA have each allocated 30% of their laboratory space to commercial customers. The European agency recently signed a $1.7 million, four-year contract with Intospace, a company based at Hannover in Germany, to market the station to commercial users.

Graf said that, although European companies would be its main target, ESA was open to proposals from all over the world, including offers from public–private partnerships. He added that a request could be passed on to one of the other ISS partner agencies if ESA could not handle it.

The Russian Space Agency also plans to provide a competitive commercial package on the station. Russia expects to be able to take experiments there more cheaply using its Soyuz or Proton rockets than either NASA or ESA will be able to do on the US space shuttle.