NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida announced that it will support the new Center of Excellence (COE) for Commercial Space Transportation, that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced on Wednesday.

This university-led pool is a partnership between academia, industry and government with the purpose of building a world-class consortium for future commercial space transportation.

Ray LaHood, the US Transportation Secretary announced that the FAA has chosen New Mexico State University (NMSU), Las Cruces, NM, to lead the new COE.

The University will be the leader or a team of colleges and universities including Stanford University in California, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

The new center should be operational this month and it will cover four major research areas: space launch operations along with traffic management, commercial human space flight, launch vehicle systems, payloads, technologies, and operations, and space commerce (including space law, space insurance, space policy and space regulation).

The FAA will divide the costs by half thanks to its partners, and it plans to invest at least one million dollars a year for the first five years of the operations.

Kennedy Center Director Bob Cabana said that the space center “is pleased to participate in the FAA's new Center of Excellence and to support this winning team … We look forward to active involvement in these research and development initiatives.

“This collaborative effort initiated by the FAA aligns perfectly with NASA's evolving relationship and support for a vital U.S. commercial space industry and with our vision of a 21st Century Space Launch Complex.”

The Kennedy Space Center will be used as a flight test center for COE research, as the program evolves.

Jim Ball, Kennedy's program manager for Strategic Partnerships, is very enthusiast about this collaboration and says that “The FAA's new Center of Excellence will help build the nation's future space transportation capabilities.”

The American space program covers the civil, military and commercial sectors and the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is responsible for licensing, regulating and promoting the commercial sector space industry.