NASA Offers Opportunity to Use Communications Testbed on Space Station

“NASA is announcing opportunities for academia, industry and government agencies to develop and carry out research and technology demonstrations on the International Space Station using the newly installed Space Communications and Navigation (SCAN) testbed. There are two announcements of opportunity. The SCAN Testbed Experiment Opportunity invites industry and other government agencies to enter into Space Act Agreements with NASA to use the space station’s SCAN platform. The SCAN Testbed Cooperative Agreement Notice invites academia to develop proposals to use the orbiting laboratory’s SCAN testbed research capabilities. NASA expects the first demonstrations by late 2013 or early 2014. These opportunities will allow researchers to develop new software according to the Space Telecommunications Radio Standard (STRS) architecture for radios and reconfigure how radios communicate in space.” More