The Trump administration has taken another small step towards its larger leap to commercialize space laboratory activities, even as NASA struggles to put current commercialization plans into place.

A new White House memo released Friday (Aug. 14) said that low Earth orbit research "on new platforms" — commercial facilities that could succeed the International Space Station — should be a priority. It was published as part of the yearly joint initiative to figure out budget priorities in research and development, between the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

While this year's memo has very similar wording to that released last year, according to SpaceNews, there is one key sentence that shows the new prioritization on low Earth orbit (LEO) research.

"Microgravity research in biological and physical science on new platforms in Low Earth Orbit is important to enabling longer duration human missions in space, and may have practical benefits to life on Earth," states the memo, which you can view here.