ISS U. S. National Laboratory NanoRacks III Facility, Phase I

Non-NASA applications include space flight hardware qualification studies as well as biological, pharmaceutical, and materials science commercial space research applications. In particular, commercial customers have approached NanoRacks to fly higher power electronics testing facilities to provide TRL raising services at low cost. This NanoRacks III Facility system combined with the NanoRacks commercial space operations model will provide commercial researchers with easy, regular, low cost, and standardized access to the ISS U.S. National Laboratory research facility. The easy to use NanoRacks III Facility will provide conventional research techniques in space to more traditional researchers. A flight qualified NanoRacks III Facility will be able to perform the following studies on-orbit using standardized format MegaCubeLab enclosures: higher power (~50 watts) TRL testing of spacecraft components for the NASA FAST program, higher power biological facility experiments (e.g. thermoelectric cooled biological payloads, biological incubators, etc.), higher power materials science experiments (e.g. micro furnace, laser furnace, etc.). These studies will support new microgravity biological and materials science research areas never before available on-orbit. Capabilities like this will be critical especially with the end of the shuttle program, when the amount of returned mass, no matter the hardware available, will require we move more and more towards a system of on-orbit analysis More »