NASA has spent decades conquering space with even more ambitious projects set for the coming decades, and now the public can get a glimpse of all of its research online — for free. The new portal, called Pubspace, will allow users to peruse thousands of NASA research articles on everything from Mars missions to the toxicity of lunar dust, according to NASA.

The announcement of the huge public project comes three years after the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directed the space agency to start making more of its research available to the public — before, you had to pay to access it.

Not all articles will be available. If there is some issue relating to national security, or a patent issue, you may not be able to access a paper. But it does mean hundreds of articles are already available for the public to check out, and that number will continue to go up.

NASA’s statement is below:

Public access to NASA-funded research data now is just a click away, with the launch of a new agency public access portal. The creation of the NASA-Funded Research Results portal on NASA.gov reflects the agency’s ongoing commitment to providing broad public access to science data.

“At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. “Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air and space.”

NASA now requires articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings be publicly accessible via the agency’s PubSpace.

PubSpace is an archive of original science journal articles produced by NASA-funded research and available online without a fee. The data will be available for download, reading and analysis within one year of publication.

While the agency always has made access to its research a high priority, the focus now is to make NASA science data more easily accessible via “one-stop shopping.” This increased public access is intended to accelerate the dissemination of fundamental research results to advance scientific knowledge and help ensure the nation’s future prosperity.

The NASA-Funded Research Results portal is in response to a 2013 request from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, directing science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally-funded research. NASA’s public access plan was developed in coordination with the science and technology research community across the agency. NASA will continue to consult with the scientific community, academic institutions, publishers and other federal agencies to implement this plan and increase access to research results.

“Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research,” said NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan. “As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others.”

NASA is using PMC to permanently preserve and provide easy public access to the peer-reviewed papers resulting from NASA-funded research. Beginning with research funded in 2016, all NASA-funded authors and co-authors (both civil servant and non-civil servant) will be required to deposit copies of their peer-reviewed scientific publications and associated data into NASA’s publication repository called NASA PubSpace. This EXCLUDES patents, publications that contain material governed by personal privacy, export control, proprietary restrictions, or national security law or regulations. NASA PubSpace is part of PubMed Central (PMC) which is managed by the NIH.

You can now search NASA related articles archived in PMC at NASA PubSpace. PubSpace will be fully functional Fall of 2016.

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 challenged our Nation to grow our technical and scientific abilities in air and space. Since the 1970s, numerous economic reports and articles have demonstrated that NASA investments help grow the US economy. Perhaps most importantly NASA-funded R&D helped stimulate our long-term capacity for innovation and economic growth within the government, at universities, and at industrial companies. The disciplines advanced are many – including earth and space science, materials, computing and electronics, fuels, radio communications, safety, and even human health.

NASA advances the Nation’s space exploration, technology development, and scientific research endeavors, providing a scientific infrastructure that enables exploration today, tomorrow, and generations from now.