Orbital ATK's Cygnus (OA-7) spacecraft successfully berthed to the International Space Station (ISS) early this morning after launching Tuesday, April 18th from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. This mission is NanoRacks' largest CubeSat mission to date - carrying 38 CubeSats to be deployed from NanoRacks deployers on both the ISS and on the outside of Cygnus.

The largest portion of this mission includes 28 CubeSats from the QB50 Mission. The QB50 Mission consists of dozens of universities located around the world - including Israel, Canada, Australia, Korea, Spain, Germany, France and more.

Coordinated by the von Karman Institute and sponsored by the European Commission, the QB50 CubeSats will take advantage of the space station orbit to study the lower thermosphere (200-380 kilometers) collecting scientific climate data, in what is considered by experts a relatively unexplored part of Earth's atmosphere.

The ISS portion of the QB50 Mission involves over 300 students and 50 professionals which brings the program together.

See the full list of QB50 Mission CubeSats here.
OA-7 is also the third flagship mission where NanoRacks is providing opportunities for CubeSat deployment from Cygnus after the vehicle departs from the station. The NanoRacks External Deployer is installed on the exterior of the Cygnus service module with the capability to deploy satellites after Cygnus' completion of its primary ISS resupply mission.

On this mission, NanoRacks integrated four of Spire's Lemur-2 satellites in the External Deployer. Once deployed from the Cygnus vehicle itself, these satellites will build on Spire's mission to provide close to real time information from anywhere on Earth via their small satellites. This mission will build on Spire's offerings of maritime and weather data.

Additionally on this NanoRacks CubeSat mission are three satellites that were selected for flight by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) as part of the seventeenth installment of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) missions, and sponsored by the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP). These CubeSats are:

+ IceCube - NASA Wallops Flight Facility

+ CXBN-2 - Morehead State University

+ CSUNSat1 - California State University, Northridge

Learn more about the ELaNa XVII ISS CubeSat Deployment satellites here.

"We're all extremely proud to have brought together such a wide variety of satellites on this mission. With so many innovative technology demonstrations, including a global constellation of research satellites, commercial payloads, and NASA sponsored missions, this is truly our most comprehensive and technologically diverse CubeSat mission to date," says NanoRacks Senior Mission Manager, Conor Brown.

"The collaboration behind this mission exemplifies the growing support for commercial utilization of the Space Station, and NanoRacks is proud to be at the forefront of this transition. Not to mention, it was remarkable to share this launch experience in Cape Canaveral with so many of our partners from all over the world."

NanoRacks is excited to continue to expand the Company's CubeSat and SmallSat services, and is now offering the "Doublewide Standard" which will allow for 6U CubeSats in the 2U x 3U form factor and 12U CubeSats in the 2U x 6U form factor.

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Orbital cargo ship arrives at space station
Miami (AFP) April 22, 2017
An unmanned Cygnus cargo ship carrying a load of supplies and science experiments arrived safely at the International Space Station on Saturday, according to live images broadcast on NASA television. Working from inside the orbiting lab, US astronaut Peggy Whitson and her French counterpart Thomas Pesquet operated the station's external robotic arm to grab the approaching spaceship at 6:05 a ... read more

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