Space Act Agreements (abbreviated SAA) are a type of legal agreement specified in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (and subsequent congressional authorizations) that uniquely empowers the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to work with any entity that enables fulfillment of the Administration's mandate.
L. 111–314 (text) (PDF)): The Agency enters into SAAs with various partners to advance NASA mission and program objectives, including international cooperative space activities.
[3] Besides these two initiatives NASA has concluded five other agreements in the Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities (CSTC).
[not verified in body] Five agreements were signed between January 2007 and June 2007:[4] All three of the Space Act Agreement initiatives, COTS, CSTC and CCDev are for development, engineering and testing of design concepts, but CSTC is different from the other two initiatives in no providing any funding.
CSTC agreements are only instruments committing NASA to increase cooperation and to support the private sector companies with information and other facilities, but this commitment is without financial implications and both sides (NASA and the private companies) should ensure by themselves the required funds for their respective parts of the activities.