Space

NASA Opens the International Space Station to Private For-Profit Businesses

A new NASA directive will enable commercial manufacturing and production and allow both NASA and private astronauts to conduct new commercial activities aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The announcement was made on Friday morning at a news conference (at the 2:00 hour mark) led by NASA chief financial officer Jeff DeWit.

According to NASA, there are prerequisites to the program:

To qualify, commercial and marketing activities must either:

require the unique microgravity environment to enable manufacturing, production or development of a commercial application;
have a connection to NASA’s mission; or
support the development of a sustainable low-Earth orbit economy.

Full details are available at the NASA website.