NanoRacks and Boeing team up to develop first commerical airlock for ISS.
To support the growing needs of commercial space companies aboard the International Space Station, NASA has approved a proposal by NanoRacks to develop and construct the laboratory’s first commercial airlock.
NanoRacks is one of the largest commercial space companies that send cubesats - miniature satellites often funded by small companies and academic institutions - to the space station for deployment. They will be working with Boeing to create the airlock, which is slated to arrive at the complex by late 2019. The airlock would not only deploy cubesats, but would also be able to host commercial external science payloads. Currently, Japan’s Kibo laboratory and Europe’s Columbus module can host externally-mounted science payloads and commercial payloads compete for space. By installing a commercial airlock, both government space agencies and commercial entities would be able to have increased science payloads aboard the space station. All science payloads on the ISS are determined and managed by CASIS - the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space. CASIS will employ the same vetting procedures it currently has in place to select commercial payloads for use in this airlock. The exact placement of the airlock on the ISS has not yet been determined, though NASA said it will attach to an available port on the Tranquility node. Tranquility also has another historic commercial space payload attached to it, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, which launched in April 2016. P/C:NanoRacks/NASA