Launch of National Lab

By Jeffrey Manber – The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) is ready to open its doors in running the U.S. National Lab on space station. The idea of a non-profit running the operations on the U.S. side of the station and as a national lab is a wonderful step forward–and we [...]

Creating an EcoSystem

By Jeffrey Manber – We have been working around the clock to not only create proposals for NASA’s SBIR 2011, but to answer questions and work with other companies that are submitting proposals based on NanoRacks’ facilities and standards. It’s been a strange experience. Multiple times over the past couple of weeks, Mike Johnson and his [...]

Progress Cargo Ship Failure

By Jeffrey Manber – The russian cargo ship Progress 44 p which launched today with more than 2 tons of cargo for the space station seems to have suffered a catastrophic failure. The six person crew onboard the station is unaffected. There are also ample supplies. We are confident the Russian authorities will quickly pinpoint this, [...]

Recognition!

By Jeffrey Manber – NanoRacks thanks the folks over at the Space Frontier Foundation for awarding their 2011 “Vision to Reality” award to us. As Jim Muncy explained, this award is not for space companies that are solely business plans or viewgraphs but for those that have accomplished real world space operations with a proven [...]

A New Chapter Called Utilization

By Jeffrey Manber – Last night, at about 23:00 Central time, the final NanoRacks’ payload on STS-135 was deactivated by the astronauts. Included in that payload was the Israeli’s Fisher Institute’s second series of programs with us. By our reckoning, that deactivation was probably one of the final payloads to be shut down by the Atlantis [...]

“Up and Down” SSEP Payload Riding on STS-134

By Mike Johnson – All went fine today. For those of you who have asked, this series of experiments is not using the NanoRacks’ platforms nor will be staying on the space station. Payload platform that houses the NCESSE SSEP school projects, plus the research by a number of organizations. Here the unit is being activated [...]

Progress Report on STS-134 Operations

By Mike Johnson – We had a partial successful activation of our hardware this morning, both the MDA that rides up and down, and the LMA’s some of which transfer over to station. Marshall folks immediately wanted to know the % of science that was affected; we estimate 30%. The rest is fine, student payloads are [...]

NanoRacks’ Facilities Take a Major Leap Forward

By Jeffrey Manber – Today we can announce that the on-orbit research capabilities of the NanoRacks’ family of hardware facilities has taken a major leap forward. We have been chosen by NASA to adopt an off-the-shelf research facility known as a Plate Reader for use on the U.S. National Laboratory. First, we have to thank [...]

Dumitru Dorin Prunariu Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Flight on Salyut

By Jeffrey Manber – Congratulations to our friend Dumitru Dorin Prunariu on the 30th anniversary of his flight on Salyut 6. Dorin and NanoRacks are exploring ways to work together to assure a new generation of Romanian students and researchers have access to space. Dumitru Dorin Prunariu (pictured center) on the 30th anniversary of his flight [...]

NASA Web Site Highlights NanoRacks’ Educational Partner NCESSE

By Jeffrey Manber – NASA’s educational folks have taken note of the great job that Jeff Goldstein and everyone at SSEP has done in launching a national space STEM project via the NanoRacks’ flight and payload opportunities. You can read what they say on the NASA web site at: http://ssep.ncesse.org/2011/04/major-announcement-student-spaceflight-experiments-program-ssep-now-featured-at-www-nasa-gov/ And to better understand just how [...]