The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space will continue to manage an International Space Station segment that operates as a U.S. national laboratory through 2027 under an extended cooperative agreement with NASA.
CASIS helps the agency maximize the space community’s access to the ISS National Laboratory and create new commercial destinations in low-Earth orbit, NASA said Thursday.
The nonprofit organization, located at the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory, started managing the lab in 2011 and signed a new agreement with NASA in 2017 to extend its services through 2024.
The ISS National Laboratory has sponsored space-based research and development projects that produced more than 150 peer-reviewed articles over the past decade.
“Extending our cooperative agreement through 2027 now is important to provide continuity for our user community while we look toward how this model should evolve as we begin the transition to commercial low-Earth orbit destinations later in the decade,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS and NASA liaison to the ISS National Lab.
