Houston, TX- February 27th, 2015 – NanoRacks began deployment from the International Space Station (ISS) of the remainder of our Orb-2 CubeSat Mission which includes 12 Planet Labs Doves. Of these Doves, ten are the remainder of Flock-1B launched on Orb-2, and two are the new Flock-1D’ Doves, launched on SpaceX CRS-5.
This was NanoRacks first deployment attempt since recent on-orbit repairs and we are excited to announce a successful first deploy.
At 8:30 a.m. CST on Friday, February 27th, NanoRacks commanded one deployer, releasing two of the Planet Labs Flock 1B Doves to low Earth orbit. Deployment commands will continue to run through March 5, 2015 when the deployment window closes.
NanoRacks has been working rigorously with NASA, JAXA, Roscosmos, and other ISS partners to repair the deployers currently on station. This repair work included crew installation of a new, simplified, commanding system for the deployers, and secondary latches to safe the deployers in case of any operational issues. The repair hardware was delivered in January on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, and the latches were successfully installed on February 17, 2015 with the plan to deploy ten days later, on February 27.
“Over the last six months, NASA and JAXA have worked tirelessly with NanoRacks to ensure that the on-orbit hardware adaptations make our CubeSat deployers safe and ready for operations. It’s a testament to the ISS Program’s ability to cooperate with commercial partners and utilize the resource they have on orbit.” says NanoRacks External Payloads Account Manager Conor Brown.
We look forward to meeting growing customer demands, and continuing deployments from the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer. NanoRacks is also launching a new small satellite deployment system, Kaber, to the International Space Station. Kaber will be delivered to ISS on the seventh SpaceX Cargo Resupply Mission and will support CubeSat-class satellites and large microsatellites weighing up to 100 kilograms.
About NanoRacks, LLC:
NanoRacks LLC was formed in 2009 to provide commercial hardware and services for the U.S. National Laboratory onboard the International Space Station via a Space Act Agreement with NASA. NanoRacks’ main office is in Houston, Texas, right alongside the NASA Johnson Space Center. The Business Development office is in Washington, DC. The Company seeks to democratize outer space utilization by owning and marketing its own family of research equipment and by providing low-cost, high quality services in low-earth orbit and beyond.
To date over 200 payloads have been deployed by the Company on the International Space Station and our customer base includes the European Space Agency (ESA) the German Space Agency (DLR,) the American space agency (NASA,) US Government Agencies, Planet Labs, Urthecast, Space Florida, NCESSE, Virgin Galactic, pharmaceutical drug companies, and organizations in Vietnam, UK, Romania and Israel. Our customer base has propelled NanoRacks into a leadership position in understanding the emerging commercial market for low-earth orbit utilization.