Sorry, space fans, but there won’t be any rocket blastoffs in mid-Missouri after all.
NASA announced it would be headquartering its newest national laboratory at the Space Life Sciences Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, choosing the proposal over a joint proposal submitted by MU and the city of Columbia’s Regional Economic Development Inc.
The joint proposal would have brought the portion of the International Space Station program that functions as a national laboratory and specializes in applied technology for the ISS to MU.
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, a not-for-profit group, was selected to operate the laboratory.
“The station is the centerpiece of our human spaceflight activities for the coming years,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. “CASIS will help NASA make the station available to a diverse national market that will use this unprecedented resource in innovative ways.”
NASA has a history of extensive flight research, major facility investments and flight centers in both Florida and Ohio but not in Missouri or Massachusetts.
“We submitted a major proposal to NASA, which met all of the agency’s requirements to apply to operate the ISS National Laboratory under a cooperative agreement,” said Rob Duncan, vice chancellor of Research at MU. “We submit about 2,700 proposals a year to funding agencies, primarily federal agencies, and this was one of the proposals that we submitted last year.”
NASA informed MU and REDI that it preferred the proposals from Florida and Ohio to proposals from MU and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“It is not uncommon to see the government invest in new activities that are close to their existing flight centers, but of course this was in no way a requirement of the proposal process,” Duncan said.
The laboratory would have brought $15 million a year in basic funding to MU. In addition, Duncan said a main benefit of having the lab in Columbia would have been to form other opportunities for research activities.
“If this ISS national lab is managed well, then it will quickly attract and produce far more than the $15 million per year that NASA is ready to pay to get it started,” he said.
Duncan’s concern was on the product benefit than the revenue.
“I was more interested in the ‘hunting license,’ that is, our ability to produce profoundly high value through technically-inspired team formation to meet major national needs, than I was in the $15 million per year, although that funding would be essential to get such a bold effort going initially,” he said.
According to a NASA news release, CASIS and the ISS National Laboratory will develop technology based on U.S. national needs for applied research.
The goal is to support, promote and accelerate innovations in science, engineering and technology, according to the release.
“The lab would have managed all aspects of space-based basic and applied research on the ISS for NASA, except for research on astronaut health during space flight,” Duncan said. “The lab would also have had a big emphasis on technology transfer and economic development, and on stimulating student interest and training the workforce in issues relating to science, technology, engineering and math fields.”
