Orb-2 Carries Over 40 NanoRacks’ Customer Payloads
Houston, TX- July 16, 2014 –Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus spacecraft successfully berthed to the
International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday morning after launching Sunday afternoon from
the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
Onboard were 32 CubeSats and 10 internal payloads from NanoRacks’ customers holding dozens of research experiments onboard.
Orbital’s Cygnus was brought to orbit by a two-stage Antares rocket. Cygnus was carrying 1,664 kg of supplies, CubeSats, and research experiments for the Space Station. Cygnus will remain berthed at the ISS for about 30 days where station crew will unload the experiments and other hardware. This was Orbital Sciences’ third resupply mission to the ISS, including their Orb-D1 developmental milestone launch.
“Kudos yet again to the Orbital team on a job well done” says NanoRacks CEO, Jeffrey Manber. “And to our customers who never tire of making the necessary changes to their payloads as the schedule changes.”
NanoRacks continued its relationship with Planet Labs via 28 new Doves for Flock 1b. Once
deployed, these satellites will continue the Planet Labs’ goal to capture imagery of the entirety of Earth. Also launched Sunday afternoon were NASA Ames Research Center’s TechEdSat-4, studying the return of small payloads; the Microsized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite MicroMAS, aiming to provide
unprecedented observations of hurricanes and tropical storm dynamics; GEARSSAAT,
investigating the Globalstar satellite network; and Lambdasat, measuring radiation effects on graphene material in LEO and tracking vessels inside its footprint around the globe.
Additionally, featured on the Orb-2 launch from NanoRacks were 15 independent research
projects from the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) through the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. This STEM education initiative, held in partnership with NanoRacks, allows students across the United States the ability to propose and design experiments to fly on the space station. The 15 winning experiments were selected out of 1,344 student team proposals. Learn more about the student experiments
here.
NanoRacks’ internal payloads also included five NanoLabs run by educational partner Valley
Christian High School, which will analyze mesoscopic lipid mimics, slime molds, Yeast CO2, plant nutrition and algae. The first Cubesat deployment via the NanoRacks deployer is now scheduled for the end of July. It should take about a week to deploy the first block of CubeSats. All the internal experiments are expected to be operated and then returned to Earth via the Soyuz spacecraft.
About NanoRacks, LLC
NanoRacks LLC was formed in 2009 to provide commercial hardware and services for the U.S. National Laboratory onboard the International Space Station via a Space Act Agreement with NASA. The Company is unique in owning and marketing its own family of research equipment, both inside and external to the Space Station, and in providing low-cost, high quality services to Station customers. To date, NanoRacks has deployed over 200 payloads on Space Station. The Company’s current signed customer pipeline of over 150 payloads, including those from DLR, NASA, US Government Agencies, Planet Labs, Space Florida, NCESSE, pharmaceutical drug companies, and organizations in Vietnam, UK, Romania and Israel, has propelled NanoRacks into a leadership position in understanding the emerging commercial market for low-earth orbit utilization.
Download the full press release or follow @nanoracks on Twitter for further updates.