Commercial Astronaut Missions to the ISS: From Concepts to Implementation

Abstract

European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts’ International Space Station (ISS) flight opportunities are considered as a vital source to meet the utilisation, operation and political objectives which Europe has established for participating in the ISS programme. Recent internal ESA assessments have demonstrated that, in order to satisfy the objectives drawn up in the ESA ISS Exploitation Programme, a rate of three flights per year for European astronauts should be maintained as a minimum objective; the current flight rate is lower than this.In order to improve this situation, in the context of the activation of the ESA ISS Commercialisation Programme, ESA and Intospace are developing the conditions for the establishment of ESA astronaut missions with the financial support of both ESA and the private sector or, in the future, only the latter. The study led to the definition of a “commercial astronaut”, as a member of the European Astronaut Corps, who will be assigned the responsibility to perform research and commercial space projects in a given ISS mission scenario. Some opportunities for this scenario are outlined here.KeywordsInternational Space StationEuropean Space AgencyManned SpaceFlight CostMission ThemeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.