“We provide our customers the guidance and insight needed to ensure their research is rigorous, well-designed, and impactful to the broader scientific community–this helps move the needle forward on microgravity research,” she wrote.
While there’s some agency funding attached to these projects, “a lot of the money for these flights is coming through their tickets rather than science contracts,” says Ariel Ekblaw, founder and director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. But, she points out, they’re a chance to move projects forward relatively quickly.
Donoviel expects that science will become a higher priority for these companies once they’ve proven the economic viability and technological capacities of the private space industry. “Honestly, with a lot of these companies, the last thing on their minds is research. But they will come around, and at some point it will become important to them,” she says.