NanoRacks, a company doing business on the International Space Station (ISS), has launched roughly six Defense Department payloads into space via ISS, a company official told Defense Daily.
Kirk Woellert, external payloads manager for NanoRacks, said Friday the six payloads are performing basic research on behalf of the Army, Navy and Air Force. He declined to provide specifics on the work being performed. Woellert said NanoRacks is also under contract from other federal government agencies, but he declined to provide details. NanoRacks is doing business on ISS through a 2009 NASA Space Act Agreement, Wollert said.
Woellert said the DoD payloads NanoRacks has launched from ISS range from cubesats 3 kg overall mass to small microsatellites about 60 kg overall mass. Woellert declined to say if NanoRacks had any other DoD payloads in the pipeline, but he said it was a market the company was committed to serving.
NanoRacks is primarily a commercial space endeavor, but this is the first time the company has been reported doing business with DoD. NanoRacks, on its website, says it is an entrepreneurial company that was the first to market its own hardware and services onboard ISS. NanoRacks’ services include cubesat deployment, biopharm services, test platforms for advanced sensors for earth observation and research platforms for materials and educational research.
Woellert said NanoRacks is doing business with DoD to make money.
“We’re just another business and we happen to be doing business in space,” Woellert said. “If you show up with a check, you get in the front of the line and we fly you to space…If you want to have a true space-based economy that is self-sustaining, that is the kind of mindset you need to have.”
Woellert declined to say how much NanoRacks’ DoD contracts were worth, but he said the company is a lean, agile space access provider and that NanoRacks’ fees for services are commensurate with that principle. Woellert said classic aerospace companies, unlike NanoRacks, cannot provide this type of effect or utilization, at this throughput.
The DoD payloads arrived via NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) missions. NanoRacks deploys small and cubesat-sized satellites from ISS through its CubeSat Deployer or Kaber small satellite deployment system, which supports cubesat-class satellites and larger microsatellites weighing up to 100 kg.
Kaber is a reusable system that provides command and control for satellite deployments from ISS. Microsats that are compatible with Kaber have additional power, volume and communications resources enabling missions in low earth orbit (LEO) of more scope and sophistication.
Army spokesman Dov Schwartz said in an email the service launched a payload called Kestrel Eye off of ISS via NanoRacks. Schwartz said Kestrel Eye is an electro-optical microsatellite-class imagery satellite for tasking by the tactical ground component warfighter.
Capable of producing tactically-useful imagery, Schwartz said Kestrel Eye’s data can be downlinked directly to the same warfighter via a data relay network that is also accessible by other warfighters in theater without any continental United States relay. He said Kestrel Eye’s intent is to demonstrate a tactical space-based imagery microsatellite.
A request for comment to the Air Force was not received by press time. The Navy was unable to respond to a request for comment by press time.