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NanoRacks and Moon Express team up for lunar missions

Capitalism in space: The private space company Moon Express has signed an agreement with NanoRacks to help manage its planned lunar commercial missions.

Under the agreement, NanoRacks, a company best known for transporting satellites and other payloads to the International Space Station, will handle sales, marketing and technical support for payloads that will fly on Moon Express’ series of lunar lander missions, starting in early 2018. “The primary goal of our alliance with NanoRacks is to ensure a great customer experience,” said Bob Richards, founder and chief executive of Moon Express, in a statement. “Our companies share a culture of customer focus, and together we will be able to provide end to end support from payload concept to mission operations.”

NanoRacks does similar work for researchers and cubesat manufacturers who want access to ISS. They act as the go-between, bundling the different projects and arranging them with NASA.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • mkent

    NanoRacks is quickly becoming a player in commercial space. They’re best known for deploying cubesats from the ISS. However, they now have a new deployer onboard capable of handling the larger microsats. They also have dedicated rack space inside the station (hence their name) and, in a recent development, outside the station. They are working to loft a small centrifuge to the station to accommodate partial-g studies and a commercial airlock to facilitate larger satellite deployments. Rumor has it they are negotiating with NASA for a dedicated crewman on the ISS to run commercial experiments.

    A lot of great capability from a small company.

  • Edward

    mkent wrote: “A lot of great capability from a small company.

    How true. They found an important niche that needed filling, and they are making the most of it, to the benefit of a lot of experimenters.

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