Conducting Research in Space One Cube at a Time

Check out this cool clip showing International Space Station crew members last week removing a card containing experiment cubes from the TangoLab-1 facility, operated by Space Tango.

TangoLab-1  is a general research platform on the ISSInternational Space Station that houses CubeLabs (10-cm cubed modules that offer the capabilities of a full lab) and provides power and communication links for the experiments it contains. Although TangoLab-1 is a permanent facility on the space station, CubeLabs, and thus experiments, can be swapped out. Because TangoLab-1 is not built for any specific type of research, it is highly customizable.

TangoLab-1 arrived on the space station in August 2016, and a second TangoLab facility was launched to the ISS on SpaceX CRS-12 this past August to meet customer demand. In addition to adding some new capabilities, TangoLab-2 increases the number of experiments Space Tango can accommodate at a time from 21 to 42—dramatically expanding the number of customers that can conduct experiments on the ISS National Lab.

Learn more about how in-orbit commercial facility operators such as Space Tango are serving as pathfinders for economic development in low Earth orbit(Abbreviation: LEO) The orbit around the Earth that extends up to an altitude of 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from Earth’s surface. The International Space Station’s orbit is in LEO, at an altitude of approximately 250 miles. in the feature “Space Tango: Research in a Box” from Upward, the official magazine of the ISS National Lab!