SPACEHAB said it has joined the ranks of companies proposing commercial cargo transport services to and from the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Service solicitation.
The company has teamed with two other aerospace services companies – MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. of Richmond, B.C., and Ball Aerospace of Boulder, Colo. – to develop and demonstrate a commercial space service called Apex under the COTS program, managed by the Johnson Space Center.
SPACEHAB envisions the service as offering “frequent, reliable and affordable access to space in support of NASA’s space station needs, but also (opening) the door to commercial access to space by corporations, academic institutions and government users around the globe,” the company said in a statement.
“Our Apex team provides a non-shuttle-based, end-to-end space access service that is an extension of the customer-responsive SPACEHAB service proven successful over the previous decade on numerous space shuttle and space station missions,” said Michael E. Kearney, SPACEHAB’s president and chief executive officer. “As a pioneer in the development of the early stages of the space commerce market, SPACEHAB is ideally positioned to grow and expand the market via the COTS initiative and related commercial services.”
The Apex service would offer a family of mission-configurable spacecraft capable of achieving orbit via several types of launch vehicles. A year ago, SPACEHAB submitted a patent application on a spacecraft designed to ferry equipment and other payload into low-Earth orbit. The craft could rendezvous with and berth to the space station, and dispose of or return equipment and experiment results.
The company said the proposed spacecraft could use several adaptable systems and technologies, including the segmented SPACEHAB payload module, a Ball Aerospace satellite bus and MDA’s automated rendezvous and proximity-operations system.
