NASA Early Career Employees Hear from New Space Station Partners

NASA’s Emerge ERG (Employee Resource Group) hosted a special lecture series with presenters from seven commercial space station companies that are working with NASA through funded and unfunded agreements.

The CLDP (Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program) at Johnson Space Center in Houston is managing the agreements that are supporting the development of new commercial space stations that will serve as potential replacements for the agency’s microgravity research needs after the retirement of the International Space Station.

Angela Hart, CLDP manager and an executive sponsor of Emerge, kicked off the series with a presentation about NASA’s strategy to support the development of the stations and how the agency will pivot to procuring microgravity services, where NASA can be just one of many customers in a commercial low Earth orbit ecosystem.

During the lecture series, Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Nanoracks, Sierra Space, SpaceX, ThinkOrbital, and Vast presented their station concepts, development plans, and answered questions from the next generation of aerospace workers. Over 2,600 were in attendance across the series. Participants left the series with a better understanding of NASA’s strategy and commercial partners plans for a commercial low Earth orbit economy and increased awareness of CLDP.

“I think this series gave JSC’s workforce, in particular JSC’s early career employees, a great opportunity to learn more about the partner companies’ plans and visions for the future of human spaceflight in low earth orbit after the International Space Station,” says Robert Beaton, Emerge’s recording secretary. “This series is an excellent example of the possibilities of ERG collaborations with their executive sponsors and additional value ERGs can deliver to NASA programs.”

The current design and development phase of the new stations will be followed by the procurement of services from one or more companies, where NASA aims to be one of many customers for low Earth orbit destinations. The agency recently issued a request for information for industry to provide input on the agency’s requirements for end-to-end low Earth orbit space station services.

For more information about NASA’s commercial low Earth orbit strategy, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space/low-earth-orbit-economy/