Following the successful delivery of the first NanoRacks Platform on Shuttle Discovery earlier this month, the second such unit is manifested aboard Atlantis, designated STS-132, for May.
This photo shows the Astrotech payload processing facility at Port Canaveral, Fla., where workers dressed in "bunny suits" lift a cargo pallet into the Russian-built Mini-Research Module-1. The second platform is stowed in this module for flight.
The NanoRacks Platform powers up to 16 individual "CubeLabs," each of which can host microgravity research experiments. This standard method for doing microgravity research offers many more organizations an opportunity to do repeatable, cost efficient work in the bio-sciences, for example.
With regularly scheduled trips to the station, Kentucky Space is now working with organizations to put their experimental programs on the ISS.
Wayne
Photo Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett March 18, 2010
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