Technology Transfer Program
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Industry
Innovative Partnerships Program
NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is the agency's lead center for developing technologies in support of Launch/Landing and Vehicle/Payload Processing. NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program was established to provide leveraged technologies for NASA's Mission Directorates, Programs, and Projects through investments and technology partnerships with industry, academia, government agencies, and national laboratories. Several programs at KSC support the Innovative Partnerships Program.
Technology Transfer
Home to world-class researchers, KSC offers a number of inventions and discoveries to the outside world. When discoveries or inventions are conceived at KSC, inventors promptly report the items as innovative technologies to the Innovative Partnerships Program Office. In order to protect the Government’s interest and to provide widest practicable and appropriate dissemination for the benefit of the scientific, industrial, and commercial communities and the general public, technology is patented, marketed and licensed to industry partners for commercial use.
Research and Development Partnerships
Partners can collaborate on research and development efforts under a Cooperative agreement, dual use agreement or NASA Space Act Agreement. NASA and their partners contribute personnel, use of facilities, expertise, or equipment, technology, etc. to perform the research and development.
Kennedy Space Center´s Innovative Partnerships Program also encompasses the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs. SBIR and STTR play an integral role in fulfilling the missions and objectives of KSC. These programs provide small, high-tech companies and research institutions opportunities to participate in government-sponsored research and development efforts in key technology areas, facilitating innovations that also have potential commercial applications and thereby contributing to the overall NASA Mission. As small businesses work to meet NASA's research and development needs, they stimulate growth in local economies and nearby business communities.
The Future
The change in the NASA mission direction by President George Bush in 2004 has opened the door to new research opportunities for NASA and its partners. While once occupied with Shuttle and the International Space Station, NASA now is on a mission to put humans on the moon between 2015 and 2020. Using a Crew Exploration Vehicle, humans will conduct extended lunar missions as early as 2015, with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods. Through Kennedy Space Center’s Innovative Partnerships Program needed research and technologies for this transformation of the program will be generated. Whether under a NASA Space Act, Patent License or SBIR/STTR, NASA will continue to reach out to industry and academia to collaborate on developing technologies or access existing technologies that will support the new mission.
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