NASA declared that the existing space on the International Space Station is not enough for all the research and wants twice as much. That's why the agency is searching for partners to share the new space.

The ISS, orbiting Earth at an average altitude 235 km (205 mi) is still being assembled, with a projected completion in 2010. Although already larger than any previous space station - 44.5 m (146 fr) long along the core and 73 m (240 ft) wide across the solar arrays - it's still not large enough for NASA.

"What we're trying to do is open up the U.S. segment of the space station to be used by a variety of folks," NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters. The agency also declared that the yearly maintenance costs of $1.5 billion won't be shared by the new partners that come aboard, but they do have to bring their own hardware and pay their researchers' salaries.

Of course, they will also have to rely on NASA's astronauts and scientist residents to carry out the work for them on the ISS. Upon the completion of the station, in 2010, the agency is considering operating it as a National Laboratory and contracting an institute to oversee the lab.

This would mean that the contractor will have full access to the US part of the station, including all the facilities, power equipment and other support services on the station. The newly proposed labs are scheduled for launch to the space station later this year and in 2008.

A total of 10 main pressurized modules (Zarya, Zvezda, Destiny, Unity (previously called Node 1), Harmony (previously called Node 2), Node 3, Columbus, Kibo, the MLM and the RM) are currently scheduled to be part of the ISS by its completion date in 2010.
The agency declared that the space station, for now only about 60 percent complete, will remain functional at least until 2020 and the total costs will rise to $100 billion.