NanoRacks originated from an idea developed in 2006 by David Anderman of Constellation Services, who took the concept in 2008 to Jeffrey Manber and Michael Johnson, both of whom shared the vision of a low-cost, standardized commercial program for what was to become the U.S. National Lab on International Space Station. As David elected not to participate in NanoRacks, Jeffrey Manber and Michael Johnson pulled together a world-class team of industry veterans who have created the leading company in the world for space utilization on the nanocube scale in low-earth orbit and beyond.

At NanoRacks we believe in open source systems and lowering the barriers of entry. Hence we invite others to suggest modifications to our systems. The goal is to help pave the way for a robust ecosystem of products and customers for the unique environment of space. As we enter our third year, we decided to look back and capture the history of just how and when the first steps were taken with two of our main hardware concepts: the NanoRacks’ research platforms now on space station (NR-1 and NR-2) and the payloads that plug in to those platforms, known as NanoLabs.

-The role NanoRacks plays in space station utilization.

Back in 2003, David attended a meeting of NASA researchers who wanted to fly their experiments on a more frequent basis. At the time, access to ISS was very restricted due to the priority of getting very large assembly elements to ISS. Also, five year intervals between experiment opportunities were not unusual during the Spacelab Program, and it was clear that ISS would have to do better.

Based on late 1980s progress made by Bill Davis of JSC in standardizing interfaces for the drawers in Spacelab rack, NASA made a decision in 1993 to apply a similar approach to International Standard Payload Racks on the ISS. The “EXPRESS Rack” project extended standardization to the drawer and locker levels, and encouraged commercial companies to offer additional capabilities that took advantage of the new architecture.

David began to develop the idea that yet a further extension of standardization, below the drawer level, would accommodate the rapidly emerging demand for nanocubes. This was reinforced by growth in molecular and cellular level biology experiments on the ISS. It occurred to David that molecules and cells were really small, and such research did not necessarily require an entire drawer in a rack.

Moreover, in the 30 years since the first flight of Shuttle, all of us, at NASA, those in the Space Station program, and in industry, knew of course that computers had shrunk dramatically, and cells were still small, so maybe the solution to increasing researchers’ frequency of access was to develop a very small, (nano) scale, science architecture and add it to ISS.

Since the space station folks had thought through this process, and there were already standard drawers and lockers at ISS, what was needed was an interface between the existing ISS drawers and a new very small science research system. Hence the NanoRacks Platform and the small payload boxes we call NanoLabs.

-Why did you choose the CubeSat (NanoLab) dimensions?

One of the strengths of ISS was that the existing science system used standardized racks, drawers and lockers, thus allowing scientists to focus on their experiment and not the supporting hardware. This meant that to foster adoption of a new, smaller system, some sort of existing (but small) standard should be selected; moreover this new standard had to be compatible with ISS for power and data connections.

David considered the emerging Cubesat system as a potential new form factor, but the problem was that its primary data and power interfaces were not well suited for ISS, which would mean a difficult process to integrate with ISS. Since he wasn’t that familiar with CubeSats, David talked to some developers and found out that there was also a standard USB interface on the bus that was used to connect to external computers for testing purposes, and that turned out to be the eventual interface for ISS.

-The next steps.

The next step was implementation of the system. David spent a couple of years looking around for technical help in developing the hardware, and preparing a patent application. He agreed with the current view of NanoRacks that open source and open systems is a wonderful path for implementation.

An early example from 2006 of the Nanoracks system using 6 drawers carrying 3 Nanolabs apiece is shown on the right. Later, Michael Johnson and his team in Houston worked with NASA to implement the current design and hardware of 16 NanoLabs per Platform. Our design from 2009 showing the NanoLabs, NR-1 and the interface with the space station Express Rack is shown below.

That acceptance by NASA lead to our proposal and eventual Space Act Agreement signed with NASA in September of 2009. Present management led that effort, not only Jeffrey, but now including Chris Cummins, Rich Pournelle and the world-class design and development team in Houston led by Michael.