Institutional Arrangements for Space Station Research (1999)

The implementation of the International Space Station (ISS) began with the launch, in November 1998, of a U.S. element procured from Russia, the Zarya module, followed by the launch of the U.S. Unity (node 1) in December 1998. With the launch of these two elements began the realization of one of the largest and most complex international technological projects in history. When completed, the ISS will house seven crew members from different countries in a habitation and laboratory complex with a mass of over 450,000 kilograms (1 million pounds) and a volume of 1,220 cubic meters (43,000 cubic feet) at sea-level atmospheric pressure. The station will be 108 meters (356 feet) long and will orbit at an altitude of about 400 kilometers (220 nautical miles), depending on the interval between servicing and the level of solar activity. The ISS orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees will make it visible to the majority of the world's population. Over 46 assembly flights will be required to put ISS together on orbit and to reach “assembly complete,” planned for 2004. Following the launch of the Russian element Zvedzda (service module), the ISS will be capable of permanent habitation by a crew of three in 2000, a crew of six in 2004, and, finally, a crew of seven following the development and deployment of a crew return vehicle sometime after 2004. ISS will begin to be used for research in 2001, and its research capability will grow as the infrastructure matures.

The ISS is a truly international undertaking. Canada is providing a mobile servicing system. The six pressurized laboratories are being provided by the United States (a laboratory module and a centrifuge accommodation module), the European Space Agency (the Columbus orbiting facility), Japan (the Kibo module), and Russia (two research modules). The pressurized modules will provide a total of 33 international standard payload racks (ISPR), each of which will provide about 1 cubic meter in pressurized payload volume. In addition, the United States is providing a habitation module and three pressurized nodes. There are also a significant number of unpressurized access locations for research at external attachment points on the ISS. Japan's module has an exposed facility to accommodate 10 instruments of about 1 cubic meter each, the U.S. truss has four sites that can accommodate up to six experiments each, and the European Space Agency (ESA) may provide an additional research site. The use of these pressurized and

unpressurized research sites is allocated among the ISS partners based on their continuing contributions to the total ISS infrastructure.

During the construction phase of the ISS, the delivery to orbit and installation of key international modules, as presently planned (NASA, 1999), is as shown in Table 1.1.

The ISS is expected to have an operational lifetime of 15-20 years, that is, until the year 2020. Throughout this period, space shuttle flights will be available for crew rotation, delivery of experiments, and return of experiment products, specimens, etc. at the rate of five per year. These shuttle flights will be supplemented by four Soyuz/Progress logistics resupply flights per year. Crew will typically stay aboard the ISS three to four months. ¹

NASA is planning to use two categories of crew for the ISS. The first, “commander,” is the equivalent of the commander and pilot in the current shuttle program. The second category, “crew member,” is the equivalent of “mission specialist” (shuttle). The mission specialists, who were career astronauts, performed most of the hands-on research in the shuttle program and conducted operations and maintenance on the systems that were not primarily concerned with the flight of the shuttle itself. Career astronauts also performed all of the research on the Mir missions. The concept of dedicated flight researchers for the ISS, similar to the payload specialists for the shuttle program, has not been accepted by the agency.

As construction on the International Space Station (ISS) approaches the stage where research experiments will be launched, NASA and the space research community have engaged in discussions aimed at ensuring that appropriate arrangements are in place for managing scientific and engineering research on the orbiting space laboratory. ²In 1998, NASA published a plan, Commercial Development Plan for the International Space Station (NASA, 1998). The plan included an attachment describing a reference model for a nongovernment organization (NGO) for managing and utilizing the ISS (NASA, 1998, Attachment 3; also see Appendix E of this report). The motivation for the discussions now taking place stems from experiences with research on earlier space-based, crew-tended facilities, particularly the space shuttle and its Spacelab laboratory module. Of particular interest to NASA and the research community is the desire to minimize investigation costs, improve efficiency and scientific throughput, provide opportunities for reflights to repeat experiments, and ensure the highest quality of research activities.

The operations and use of the ISS will involve an array of factors more complex than those associated with previous space-based scientific and engineering endeavors. All large multidisciplinary research facilities are faced with ensuring balanced access for competing scientific and engineering disciplines. In the case of the ISS, the research users are expected to come not only from academic and other nonprofit laboratories but also from privately financed industrial R&D organizations. Further, as its name implies, the ISS is an international facility in which the United States, although dominant in terms of both financial contributions and ISS facility operations, is only one of many participating nations. As such, the ISS will be serviced and staffed jointly by participating nations, and its operations will be governed by international agreements. In addition to the basic and applied science and engineering research component that provides the primary justification for the ISS, there is expected to be a strong commercial applied research component, leading to the commercialization of results, in the form of terrestrial industrial processes and products of commercial operations in space. NASA seeks, in the long term, “to establish the foundation for a marketplace and stimulate a national economy for space products and services in low-Earth orbit, where both demand and supply are dominated by the private sector” (NASA, 1998). The envisaged diversity of research uses gives rise to a range of special policy issues, e.g. the protection of proprietary data, the allocation of research resources among different disciplines, and the conduct of peer reviews and business reviews in connection with allocation and award decisions.

A more fundamental difference between the ISS and previous near-Earth orbital facilities is that the ISS is envisioned as a long-term, space-based research facility, to be occupied and utilized continuously by a changing contingent of operations and research staff. To be as successful as possible, the operational mode will more closely resemble that of ground-based facilities than of orbital facilities. Even Mir was not designed to operate to this extent as a long-term orbital research laboratory.

In its plan for the ISS, NASA has proposed that a special NGO be established outside the agency and its current formal organizations to facilitate the recruitment, selection, planning,

integration, and implementation of all U.S. research on the ISS (NASA, 1998). NASA staff developed a model of a new management approach for the ISS that would entail the creation of an NGO “for accomplishing an aggressive science, technology, and commercial development program while simultaneously limiting government functions to policy and oversight” (NASA, 1998, Attachment 3). NASA then sought advice from the National Research Council (NRC) on establishing an institution (or institutions) to meet these needs and on defining the relative roles of NASA, other federal agencies, commercial entities interested in using the ISS, and any new NGOs that are created.

A task group was appointed under the auspices of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board to examine general principles, major roles and functions, organizational character, and other relevant aspects of alternative institutional arrangements for facilitating the conduct of research on the ISS and to make recommendations to NASA.

In addressing these issues, the task group agreed to undertake the following tasks:

• Review current plans for developing and operating the ISS, the anticipated scope of planned R&D activities on the ISS, current and planned ISS ground and flight infrastructure, experience with relevant spaceflight or ground-based analogs or precursors to the ISS, and plans for international participation in the program;

• Develop basic principles to guide the definition and implementation of appropriate institutional arrangements for facilitating research aboard the ISS;

• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the NASA reference model and other relevant models; and

• Identify, to the extent feasible, the most important issues to be considered in selecting an institutional approach in areas such as the following:

  • The relationship of an institute to the host organization and to funding organizations;

  • Governance, oversight, and research community input;

  • Roles and responsibilities for planning, research prioritization, and investigation selection and funding;

  • Roles and responsibilities for hardware design, development, and integration;

  • Roles and responsibilities for data management, archiving, and distribution;

  • Scope and location of facilities and infrastructure operated by an institute; and

  • Capacity to evolve over the long term to support the main goals of the ISS.

Early in the study process, the task group concluded that it would be important to start without preconceptions about either the utility of any alternative management entity or the structure and functions of such an entity. It therefore began its study by asking the following questions:

1. What are the guiding principles for space-based research activities?

2. Learning from past experience with space-based, crew-tended research, in what ways can the management of this research be modified to better implement the guiding principles?

3. Can such improvements be made within the existing NASA framework? If not, what kind of organizational framework is needed?

4. What are the chief attributes and characteristics of the organizational framework recommended?

5. What are the functions and roles of this organization?

The current model for research on the ISS has three components:

1. Scientific research, conducted primarily at universities;

2. Applied research, sponsored by commercial entities; and

3. Engineering research conducted at NASA centers or by their contractors.

NASA historically has managed these three components in quite different ways, in part because the goals are different and in part because they were administered by different programs within NASA.

The current roles and responsibilities during the life cycle of a scientific investigation can be visualized with the aid of Figure 1.1. The figure illustrates the principal stages for a generic experiment —selection and manifesting on the flight schedule; technical definition, design, and development and verification; and, finally, flight operations and data collection and analysis. NASA officials indicated that in the past this full sequence took from 4 to 8 years.

In the life sciences, for example, the process begins when the relevant NASA headquarters program office prepares a call for proposals (the NASA Research Announcement, or NRA). Calls usually do not specify the research platform, and in some of the program offices most calls include the opportunity for ground-based research, which may or may not lead to the opportunity to use a space-based platform. After the principal investigator (PI) or PI team prepares and submits a proposal, an independent peer review process is organized and administered by NASA headquarters to evaluate the scientific and technical merits of the proposal. In the case of life science proposals, the process includes coordinating flight investigation selections across the space agencies of all international partners to optimize the use of the research equipment provided by the different partners and to identify potentially complementary or duplicative proposals. NASA preliminary technical assessments are supported by the field center

FIGURE 1.1 Generic Experiment/Project Life Cycle (ISLSWG = International Space Life Sciences Working Group, IRB = Institutional Review Board, ACUC = Animal Care and Use Committee). SOURCE: NASA.

responsible for the discipline. Based on those preliminary assessments and the scientific peer reviews, the multiagency International Space Life Science Working Group (ISLSWG) recommends experiments to be selected for further technical definition and feasibility study.

Experiments selected for definition are handed off to a designated NASA field center for the definition and feasibility analysis effort. During this phase, NASA field center specialists assist the PI with development of experimental science requirements, hardware conceptual designs, and ground-based breadboarding and/or technology verification.

Following NASA's review of the science concepts and requirements, the ISS program office at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) makes a preliminary flight assignment, and the investigation is authorized to proceed to full-scale development. During this phase the flight hardware may be developed by the PI, the NASA discipline lead center, or a third party. Detailed plans and support requirements are documented (with the assistance of the NASA field center), crew training begins, and the experiment undergoes preliminary design review (PDR), critical design review (CDR), and safety reviews—all conducted by NASA. Prelaunch hardware integration and specimen preparations (if any) are conducted by the PI, assisted by the payload developer, working with the ISS prime contractor and the JSC space station program office. Following launch, flight operations are supported by the lead NASA center for the particular discipline. Data analysis and archiving are the responsibility of the PI working under the oversight of the discipline lead center and NASA headquarters.

The above description applies to life sciences payloads specifically, but similar processes apply to other research areas (see Box 1.1). In particular, the Office of Life and Microgravity

Sciences and Applications (OLMSA) has developed a series of controlled procedures as part of the ISO9000 certification of NASA headquarters.³

In June 1998, the NASA Space Station Utilization Board (SSUB), a committee composed of NASA associate administrators, established guidelines for accommodating U.S. payloads on the ISS. The allocations summarized in Table 1.2 and Table 1.3 are for the first five-year strategic planning process; the NASA headquarters research program offices can use them to plan for the development and flight of their sponsored payloads on the ISS. They are described by NASA as guidelines for planning, not rigid entitlements, since the actual strategic plans are developed and approved annually by the SSUB.

Commercial payloads could acquire additional accommodation by providing more infrastructure for attached payloads to increase the capability available to the United States. NASA plans to encourage its research program offices to release any underutilized capacity as early as possible to allow reassignment to other users within the strategic time frame. The task group has not independently assessed whether these numbers represent an appropriate allocation. It recognizes, however, that they are initial planning numbers that will go through iterations as the ISS research program matures and as flight assignment manifests evolve.

Each of the partners in the ISS program has agreed to an allocation of user accommodations in the pressurized volume of the ISS and for attached, external payload accommodations in accordance with its contribution to the ISS infrastructure (Table 1.4).

Each of the partners is entitled to a similar share of allocated user resources (currently only average annual power and non-Russian crew time) and to purchase a share of supporting services such as pressurized launch and return mass, unpressurized launch and return mass, pressurized launch and return volume, and communications data transmission capacity.

Russia's utilization resources are not included in the numbers above. The Russian Space Agency (RSA) retains access to 100 percent of utilization resources that it provides to the ISS. It also has the rights to the on-orbit crew time of three crew members when there is a crew of seven (crew rights before reaching a seven-person crew capability are not yet settled) to be used for utilization and operations in its own segments.

Briefings and documentation from NASA, from which the preceding information about the ISS program is abstracted, provided the starting point for the task group's deliberations on the context and principles that would have to underlie an entity charged with managing the utilization of the ISS research capability. Some guiding principles are recommended in Chapter 2.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 1999. International Space Station Assembly Sequence, IS-1999-06-ISS011JSC .

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 1998. Commercial Development Plan for the International Space Station. November 16.