Access Flight Tests
Flight Opportunities offers several avenues for accessing flights on commercial vehicles in order to test and demonstrate space technologies. Whether you are a NASA employee, a student, or a researcher with a university, research institute, or commercial organization, funds may be available directly through the program or in collaboration between Flight Opportunities and other NASA programs.
TechFlights | TechLeap Prize | TechRise Student Challenge | NASA-Supported Payloads
TechFlights Solicitation
Open to researchers from U.S.-based industry, academia, and other non-NASA organizations (both for-profit and non-profit), the Flight Opportunities TechFlights solicitation awards funding for space technologies that address the priorities of NASA and the nation.
Learn more about TechFlights
TechLeap Prize
Open to qualified commercial businesses, academic institutions, entrepreneurs, and other innovators, this challenge enables technology developers to compete for funding to advance an innovation that addresses a specific technology need.
Learn more about TechLeap
TechRise
This NASA competition enables students in grades 6–12 to propose space technology and science experiments for development and flight testing. Teams can submit ideas for experiments to fly on a suborbital flight platform. Competition winners receive $1,500 to build their payloads and an assigned spot on a NASA-sponsored commercial flight test.
Learn more about TechRise
NASA-Supported Payloads
NASA personnel or external researchers with NASA-funded projects can request support for suborbital and hosted orbital flight testing with NASA-contracted U.S. commercial flight providers. Contact the Flight Opportunities team to learn more about potential flight test options for NASA-supported payloads.
Contact Flight Opportunities Chief Technologist
Examples of NASA-Supported Payloads
NASA-Supported Optical Fiber Manufacturing Arrives at Space Station
“Suborbital flight testing serves as a valuable stepping stone as it allows us to assess hardware performance in microgravity relatively quickly and cost effectively before deploying it on the station,” said Kevin Engelbert, portfolio manager for NASA Johnson Space Center’s In Space Production Applications (InSPA) project.
Keeping it Fresh: A Space Fridge for Long-Duration Missions
The Flight Opportunities program's support of Air Squared’s SBIR Phase II-E award included flight tests. Parabolic flights provided the research team brief periods of microgravity, while also allowing them to be present to tend to their payloads during flight. This demonstration provided critical data to mature the technology for potential future use on space exploration missions.
Small Business Gets an Assist from NASA Problem Solvers
This team effort across programs is one example of the many ways NASA helps foster the commercial space industry and support small businesses across the nation. And this isn’t the first time that the Flight Opportunities team has helped solve technical problems as part of the “fly-fix-fly” approach to testing.
NASA Researchers Gain Valuable Data from OSCAR’s Second Flight
Developed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, OSCAR started as an Early Career Initiative project in 2018. It launched the first time on a Blue Origin flight in December 2019 and was selected for a second flight via the Flight Opportunities program. “The data we gathered from this flight, alongside lab tests, indicate we can make some real progress in maturing an appropriate space-ready, trash-to-gas system for future development,” said Thermofluids Engineer Malay Shah.
Science Mission Directorate's ROSES Solicitation
Beginning in 2022, NASA expanded ROSES to allow researchers to propose flight testing of their science-focused technologies on commercial suborbital testing platforms via the Flight Opportunities program. These new commercial capabilities are offered in addition to the traditional NASA-provided suborbital platforms. To learn more about suborbital research in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, click the arrow.
Learn More and Get Involved
Commercial Flight Providers
When non-U.S. government researchers compete for funding through the Flight Opportunities program's TechFlights solicitation, they can propose to use any viable U.S.-based commercial provider. For U.S. government research, NASA has IDIQ (Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity) contracts with several flight services vendors.
