Airbus and the European space Agency have signed an agreement under which aircraft the company will invest in the development of the research platform Bartolomeo 40 million euros and ESA will deliver the finished module into orbit and dock it with the ISS. The platform is designed for commercial use, therefore, all its functionality will be available for a wide range of clients.
Bartolomeo module, which will consist of 12 compartments intended for different devices, and research devices. Work on the module is scheduled for completion in the next 18 months, after which he will depart to ISS together with private goods. Now developers have already adopted the design and started to create a module. Airbus plans to make low orbit cheaper, providing access to more people. Bartolomeo could be the first step to implement this idea.
Engine management specialists Airbus will take over. Maintenance will also be carried out by the company the money of clients. Delivery and installation to fully ensure the ESA, so users will only need to prepare a payload that they want to launch and pay the storage and flight. The equipment installed in the module, allows real-time tracking of the status of goods and, in addition, will provide high speed communications for data exchange between the ISS and Earth.
If partners do not keep to schedule and they will get the idea a decent implementation, at the end of next year the ISS will be a new platform for operational testing of new technologies in space, and qualitative research in different areas for a relatively small amount will surely be able to afford even small startups. It is assumed that the ISS module will deliver cargo the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
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In 2019 the ISS will be a private research module
Vyacheslav Larionov