Houston, TX- March 27, 2015—NanoRacks and DreamUp are happy to announce that the Chicks In Space, the Company’s first student crowd-sourced payload, has raised the required $15,000 to send their payload ‘The Garden of ETON’ to the International Space Station (ISS) via NanoRacks’ Dream-Up educational program.
The Chicks In Space are three sisters, MaryAnn, Lillith, and Adia Buwala, from Tennessee who have always dreamt of researching in space. The young women have completed many NASA challenges, created an after school club for space research, and recently converted their centrifuge plant growth chamber for ISS research. The Chicks’ experiment “The Garden of ETON (Extraterrestrial Organic Nutrition)” is a hydroponic garden developed to function under conditions of microgravity in hopes to learn the best way to grow a renewable food source for long-term space travel.
NanoRacks and DreamUp partnered in this venture with Experiment.com, a crowdsourcing platform specifically for researchers enabling new scientific discoveries.
“My personal mission is to create a world where anyone can be a scientist faster. Adia, Lily, and MaryAnn are scientists that embody genuine curiosity and enthusiastic spirit I’d like to see in all scientists.” Says Experiment.com Founder, Cindy Wu. “With the support of NanoRacks, we are one step closer to making our mission a reality, and I am incredibly proud of the team behind the Garden of ETON.”
On their way to the Space Station, the Chicks developed fundraising rewards for donors willing make a significant investment in their project. Specifically, donations and in-kind contributions valued at $1,000 or more were given the opportunity to have their logo on the Garden of ETON NanoLab flown to the ISS. These donors include:
• Scoutek Ltd
• Thumbsat
• L’espace C nous! Vi-III
• Terp Thon
• This Week In Science
• Micro AeroSpace Solutions
Patricia Mayes, NanoRacks’ DreamUp Director, states: “We welcome the Chicks in Space to the NanoRacks family of customers. Their successful campaign shows student teams throughout the world that anyone with legitimate science research can utilize the U.S. National Lab onboard the International Space Station.
Thank you to all who have supported the Chicks In Space, and we at NanoRacks look forward to sharing continued updates on the Chicks’ progress on Garden of ETON. Stay connected with us to learn about new student opportunities and crowd-sourcing opportunities via NanoRacks and DreamUp.
Follow the Chicks In Space on Twitter: @ChicksInSpace
For further inquiries, please contact Abby Dickes at adickes@nanoracks.com
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., and NanoRacks’ now has a new office in Silicon Valley, California. The Company has grown into the Operating System for Space Utilization by having the tools, the hardware and the services to allow other companies, organizations and governments to realize their own space plans.
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.