Federal and State Governments Partnership
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2003
As Kennedy Space Center (KSC) searched for a way to replace the Korean War-era hangar that served as the processing laboratory for life science experiments to be flown aboard the Space Shuttle, it engaged Florida leaders in discussing a bold new partnership to design, construct, and operate a Space Experiment Research and Processing Laboratory (SERPL). This facility would serve as the primary gateway to the International Space Station for its scientific experiment payloads.
Acting through the Florida Space Agency, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a group of legislative leaders offered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) a commitment of $30 million in State funds to build the lab that the International Space Station needed and to lease the lab’s capacity to NASA’s experiment processing contractor to perform Space Station payload work. In addition, the lab would host Florida’s university researchers and their colleagues. The NASA KSC team identified and obtained program commitment for annual lease funding approximating the costs that would have been incurred had operations continued in the existing, inadequate hangar. This provided a state-of-the-art replacement facility, fair return on the State’s investment, with neutral impact to the NASA facility budget.
In addition, NASA and Florida leaders saw this laboratory as an opportunity to expand KSC and the State’s resident research and development capabilities, recruit intellectual capital, and attract private investment to establish a robust space industry sector willing to locate here for the long haul.
This 100,000-square-foot facility will host the world’s most preeminent scientists engaged in life science research to be conducted aboard the orbiting space station. In accredited laboratories and processing areas, NASA’s life sciences support personnel will carefully house and prepare these experiments for launch aboard the Space Shuttle from KSC to the Space Station.
SERPL’s state-of-the-art laboratories are also available for use by qualified researchers working in collaboration with KSC or through the Florida Space Research Institute (FSRI), established by the State of Florida to promote and coordinate access by public and private universities and associated institutes.
SERPL will also support NASA research in fundamental biology, such as investigations into how microbial communities evolve in open and closed environmental systems and the Center’s ongoing research in Conservation Biology. For over 25 years, KSC’s ecological research has been a key component of NASA’s environmental stewardship of the Cape Canaveral Spaceport.
Experiments prepared at SERPL and then flown aboard the International Space Station, and other ground-based research performed in SERPL laboratories, will add immensely to NASA’s knowledge of biology and may lead to breakthrough technologies to enable humanity’s future colonization of space and improve the human condition here on Earth.
For additional information, please contact Mr. Donald Schiller at 321-867-2556 or by email at donald.schiller-1@nasa.gov.
