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 ISS 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 in the feature “Space Tango: Research in a Box” from Upward, the official magazine of the ISS National Lab!
