Summary

Description

This Phase I study will design a flight qualified NanoRacks III Facility that is similar to the conventional NanoRacks facilities currently on the ISS but with increased power, cooling and real-time data downlink/uplink capability that will increase the capacity of on-orbit testing and analysis thus reducing or eliminating sample return to Earth. A NanoRacks III Facility will allow on-orbit testing and flight qualification (elevation of TRL to 7 and higher) of critical space hardware systems and biological research hardware which will enable crew to conduct experimentation, data collection and change implementation on-orbit with guidance from ground researchers. NanoRacks, LLC proposes to design and prepare for fabrication the NanoRacks III facility which can be transported on any carrier (e.g. Progress, Dragon, HTV, etc.) to the ISS, installed in an ISS ExPRESS Rack and utilized with an ISS ExPRESS Rack computer. The Phase I study will design the NanoRacks III Facility to support the Phase II construction and flight of the NanoRacks III Facility.