Send Your Own Science Experiment to the ISS

Infinity Aerospace just launched their program that will allow students or anyone who want to send experiments to the International Space Station.

When aerospace engineer Manu Sharma was a college student, he dreamed of sending something to space. Sharma approached one of his professors about sending a cube-shaped project he was working on up into space, but was told that it would take four years to complete—time he didn't have.

"There had to be a faster way for kids and students to send projects up to space," he tells PM. Frustrated, Sharma became determined to create a project that would give anyone the opportunity to send experiments into space. So he cofounded Infinity Aerospace, a project that came to fruition this month with the company's launch of ArduLab.

An ArduLab is an open-source science platform for experiments intended for the International Space Station or for suborbital trips on board a craft like the Virgin Galactic or XCOR shuttles for microgravity testing. Made of pre-certified NASA hardware and measuring approximately 3.5 inches by 2.4 inches, an ArduLab is a rectangular, polycarbonate chassis with a microcontroller it uses to communicate with NASA computers and Infinity Aerospace's servers. The microcontroller contains an SD slot for storing onboard memory, and the whole thing is programmable using standard Arduino software.

This versatility allows the ArduLab to house different kinds of experiments, and Sharma hopes ArduLabs will be used for everything from fluid mixing tests to plant growth analysis. And because Sharma had students in mind when developing ArduLab, he wants high schools and universities to take advantage of ArduLab's adaptable programming.

"Our goal has been to tap into education, make people do space projects, or even art," Sharma said. Would-be space scientists can order an ArduLab, place their experiment inside of it, then ship it back to Infinity Aerospace. Infinity would place the experiment on a launch to the ISS, where the astronauts will install them. Once aboard the space station, the ArduLab will provide data and video output on the experiment so that designers on Earth can monitor their creations directly. In about nine months, a class could design an experiment and have it up in time for finals. It wouldn't break the bank either—ArduLabs will cost no more than $5000, a drastically cheaper price than other cubesat programs.

The first ArduLab was launched on the Orbital Sciences Cygnus spacecraft on Wednesday, and should reach the ISS this week. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will send up two experiments on a later mission, and Stanford University and three high schools in Houston are already designing ArduLab projects that will launch in July. Launch slots will be opened on a rolling basis, and the ISS can carry 40 ArduLabs, but Sharma predicts more space will be available as the project picks up steam and more schools utilize ArduLab in their curricula. He also expects that much more submissions will come rolling in once people's curiosity is piqued by the first successful launch.

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