NASA Announces Effort To Form New Collaborative Partnerships With Private Space Industry

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Jul 17, 2013, 03:33 ET

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA officials Wednesday released a synopsis requesting information from U.S. private enterprises interested in pursuing unfunded partnerships. The aim is to advance the development of commercial space products and services.

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The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities synopsis describes a potential opportunity for existing and new companies and non-profit organizations to access NASA's spaceflight expertise for mutually beneficial space exploration goals.

These new partnerships are intended to help companies accelerate their development efforts while enabling the nation to reap economic benefits from previous NASA work. NASA benefits by advancing the commercial space industry. This is a primary goal of the National Space Policy and NASA Strategic Plan, which enhance the U.S. aerospace industrial base and could lead to the availability of cost-effective commercial products and services to support human space exploration.

"As we have seen with NASA's previous agreements with the private sector, U.S. companies could significantly benefit from the agency's extensive experience and knowledge in spaceflight development and operations," said Phil McAlister, NASA's director for Commercial Spaceflight Development. "For new entrepreneurial efforts in space, NASA's archive of lessons learned, technical expertise and spaceflight data is an invaluable national resource and engine for new economic growth."

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop and advance new commercial space capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in the solar system, including to an asteroid and Mars.

The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities synopsis is available at:

http://go.nasa.gov/16Jex3j

For more information about NASA initiatives and commercial space, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/commercial

SOURCE NASA