FAA Moves Closer to Creating Center for Commercial Space Transportation

Organizations hoping to land the FAA’s new Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation (CST) face a Friday deadline for proposal submissions.

The CST is designed as a central hub that will link universities, government agencies and private companies to conduct joint research and development in commercial space technologies. The FAA plans to award contracts for the center this year.

The center will focus on five different aspects of commercial space. These include:

Space Launch Operations and Traffic Management

This category of research encompasses all the engineering, operations, management, and safety areas of study related to the overall commercial space traffic management systems and its interactions with the civil aviation traffic management systems.

Specific discipline areas of research include, but are not limited to: On-Orbit Operations (with a subcategory in orbital debris mitigation), Emergency Response, Ground Safety, Spaceports, Space Traffic Control (with subcategories of Space Situational Awareness, Trajectory Analysis, Operational Constraints, Communication Black-Out During Re-Entry, and Micro-Meteorite and Orbital Debris Avoidance), Training (with subcategories of Regulatory Training, and Operations and Maintenance Training), and Space Environment (with subcategories of Space Weather, Terrestrial Weather, and Environmental Impact).

Launch Vehicle Systems, Payloads, Technologies, and Operations

This category of research encompasses all the engineering, operations, management, and safety areas of study related to launch vehicle, its systems, and its payloads.

Specific discipline areas of research include, but are not limited to: Safety Management & Engineering, Flight Safety Analyses & Computation, Avionics (with subcategories of GPS GNC, Inertial GNC, Orbital GNC, and Docking & Berthing), Flight Safety Systems, Materials, Propulsion Systems, Sensors, Software Safety, Testing (with subcategories of Ground Component Testing, Ground Systems Testing, and Flight Testing), Vehicle Design, and Payloads.

Where appropriate, both expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) and reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) can be addressed.

Commercial Human Space Flight

This category will provide opportunities for research in the areas of Aerospace Physiology and Medicine, ECLSS and Habitability, Human Factors, Human Rating of Commercial Spacecraft, and Personnel Training.

Research in these areas can provide critical information needed to allow the ordinary citizen, i.e., that person without the benefit of the physical, physiological, and psychological training and exposure to the space environment that the traditional astronaut has, to travel to space safely, to withstand the extremes of the space environment, and to readjust normally after returning to Earth.

Space Commerce

This category of research encompasses the subcategories of space business and economics, space law, space insurance, space policy, and space regulation.

Research in these areas will include, but not be limited to, a focus on developing innovative and practical commercial uses of space; innovative business and marketing strategies for companies involved in commercial launch operations and related components and services; support of the U.S. commercial space transportation industry’s international perspective and competitiveness; and developing innovative financing for commercial launch activities.

Cross-Cutting Research Areas

There are three research topics that cross-cut most (if not all) of the four primary research areas mentioned above. These cross-cutting research topics are:

• Safety
• Testing
• Training

These three topics should be addressed in the four primary research areas where appropriate.