PARIS (ESA PR) — The first European external commercial facility on the International Space Station arrived at its new home last week: the Columbus laboratory module.

Bartolomeo, named after the younger brother of Christopher Columbus, was installed by robotic arm on the forward-facing side of the space laboratory on 2 April 2020.

By Danielle Sempsrott
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

The challenge: getting water to behave the way it does on Earth while in a microgravity environment. A collaboration between NASA, Techshot, Inc., and the Tupperware Brands Corporation is working to get the solution just right.

• Europe’s first commercial external platform on the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for launch on 6 March 2020.
• Built and tested in Germany, the Bartolomeo platform is a major step towards commercial ISS use in Europe.
• Bartolomeo offers companies and research institutions ideal conditions for exposing their experiments and technological developments to the conditions of space simply and directly.

Its days on Earth are numbered – the external platform Bartolomeo is currently waiting for its launch to the International Space Station (ISS) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

• DLR Göttingen has tested a payload platform for the International Space Station
• The Bartolomeo platform was developed by Airbus
• Commercial users will be able to conduct experiments in space more quickly and with increased cost effectiveness

Göttingen, Germany (DLR ) — The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has tested a new type of payload platform created by Airbus for the International Space Station (ISS). Researchers at DLR in Göttingen investigated the vibration behaviour of the component in order to rule out any potentially dangerous vibrations during launch or while in service.

PARIS (ESA PR) — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station plan to install a high-speed radio link to enable almost real-time connections with Earth.

The upgrade to the ESA Columbus laboratory will relay data from experiments on the Station back to Earth almost instantaneously.

PARIS (ESA PR) — The International Space Station is open for business and ESA is calling on industry to help extend the capabilities of Europe’s Columbus laboratory to support science and technology in space beyond 2024.

Columbus is Europe’s single largest contribution to the International Space Station. Launched in 2008, it is the first permanent European research facility in space.

PARIS (ESA PR) — ESA is partnering with Kayser Italia to offer the Kubik facility on the International Space Station to commercial customers. The new Bioreactor Express Service allows users to conduct experiments in weightlessness.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — The International Space Station is the setting today for a student competition to control tiny, free-floating satellites aboard the orbiting lab. Meanwhile, the Expedition 60 crewmembers conducted a variety of research operations and continued configuring a pair of spacesuits.

KOUROU, French Guiana (ESA PR) — The second satellite to join the constellation that forms the European Data Relay System (EDRS) has been successfully launched.

The satellite was launched on board an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 6 August at 21:30 CEST (19:30 UTC).

PARIS (ESA PR) — Over two weeks have flown by since ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano was launched to the International Space Station for his second six-month stay in orbit. His arrival, alongside NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Roscosmos Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov, boosted the Station’s population to six and the crew has been busy ever since – performing a wide range of science in space.