The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and US company Starlab Space have agreed to collaborate at the International Aerospace Exhibition (ILA) in Berlin. Senior representatives from both organisations signed a Letter of Intent on 10 June 2026 in the presence of Mona Neubaur, North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister for Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy. Under this agreement, DLR is reserving ten standardised experiment compartments – known as 'Middeck Lockers' – aboard the space laboratory that Starlab Space is planning to build.
Starlab Space is a joint venture of international companies developing a commercial space station in low Earth orbit. The station is intended to enable research under space conditions even after the International Space Station (ISS) has been decommissioned. This collaboration also strengthens DLR's engagement with companies in the space sector as a global market of the future. In addition, the agreement secures important resources for DLR's future research and technology development in space. The microgravity experiments required for this work cannot be conducted in any laboratory on Earth. Examples include innovative manufacturing processes and new findings in biomedicine and materials physics.
