Engineering Research and Technology Development on the Space Station (1996)

Summary: Reducing the costs and improving the performance of future government and commercial activities in space will require continuing engineering research and technology development (ERTD). Because the space environment can be very difficult to simulate on Earth and many research and development activities can only be performed in space, Earth orbit will be the most effective location for some of this ERTD. The International Space Station (ISS)—scheduled to be assembled in low Earth orbit (LEO) starting in 1997—will be a valuable location for in-space ERTD. In addition to functioning as a laboratory in which research and development activities are conducted, the ISS itself could be the subject of ERTD experiments. The unique capabilities of the ISS as a space platform—including its relatively large electrical power capacity, pressurized volume, communications capability, external area, available crew time, and logistics capability—will enable it to support a wide variety of ERTD activities. However, ERTD experiments on the ISS will have to be carefully designed to meet the high safety standards and potentially complex integration requirements of a large crewed space platform.