Introduction

SSC runs the Suborbital Express programme, providing 6 minutes of high-quality microgravity conditions on-board a sounding rocket of 280 kg scientific payload capacity. The launch takes place at Esrange Space Center in the northern hemisphere. The payload is recovered within three hours after launch.

The rideshare service is a complement to the flight implementation of the larger microgravity experiments of ESA and other customers, which constitutes the basis for the 280 kg scientific payload mission.

Shared Module for multiple small-sized experiments

In 2022 SSC introduced the multi-payload platform “Shared Module” with the capacity of hosting eight 1U Cubesat-sized payloads in a joint rideshare compartment in pressurized environment.

The main objective of the Shared Module is to provide flight opportunity to a broader audience. This benefits customers with small-sized, self-contained payloads, designed to fit into the Shared Module payload format.

The introduced concept immediately became a success, with six scientific payloads experiencing the maiden flight in November 2022, being part of the SubOrbital Express rideshare mission. In February 2024 the Shared Module flew again as rideshare on the DLR MAPHEUS-14 mission, hosting six small payloads.

Concept

The basic concept – directed towards customers, scientific groups and even teams of young engineers – is a shared, pressurized compartment housing several small-sized experiments, close to CubeSat form factor. Standard interface solutions for power, communication and mechanical implementation are provided.

Each experiment is individually powered by the platform’s support electronics (1A/28 V) and can hence be individually switched on/off during test and launch campaign. One TM/TC communication line is available for each payload.

On-site support for biological and life science experiments including late access on launch pad and fast recovery is optional.


Rideshare experiments on recent flights

The scientific and technical validation payloads flown on the first two rideshare missions were

- LabOnPaper by Polytechnical Institute of Porto, University of Coimbra and NOVA University of Lisbon (flight ticket funded by ELGRA);
- MUSA by Orbital Space Technology, Costa Rica;
- RADICALS by RMIT, Australia;
- ADI-Alpha by ResearchSat, Australia;
- ADI-Echo by ResearchSat, Australia
o ANT61 by ANT61, Australia
o Cambrian Executive, Australia;
- FORTIS by FORTIS Watches, Switzerland;
- CeMIR by Karolinska Institutet, Sweden;
- Aurore-I and -II by the Swedish Astronomical Youth Association;
- DEIMOS by DLR;
- MiniPLAX by DLR

Conclusions

This talk will further present the technical Shared Module approach and the first missions.

SSC runs the Suborbital Express programme, providing 6 minutes of high-quality microgravity conditions on-board a sounding rocket of 280 kg scientific payload capacity. The launch takes place at Esrange Space Center in the northern hemisphere. The payload is recovered within three hours after launch.

The SubOrbital Express 3 - M15 Rideshare Mission was carried out in November 2022. It accommodated payloads of ten different organisations with in total twelve different experiment systems in various sizes. For the first time, the rideshare concept included the dedicated Shared Module enabling the access to the microgravity environment, even for smaller payloads of CubeSat size or similar.
Three of the payloads were accommodated and flown under ESA contract, eight small 300 gram to ~10 kg payloads of different customers were accommodated in a dedicated rideshare system and finally one re-entry experiment capsule by CIRA / Italy with ESA-funded flight ticket was ejected during the flight. The research disciplines related to the flown experiments covered life science, fluid science, cosmology, biology.
The Lab on Paper experiment by student teams from Portugal, selected by ELGRA for the grant covering the flight ticket, was part of the payload.

The Shared Module was again flown in 2024 on the DLR MAPHEUS 14 mission with seven research experiments from DLR and from Australian and Swedish organisations, covering space radiation shielding, life science, technology demonstration for future satellite missions and 3D printing in space.

The SubOrbital Express 4 - M16 Rideshare Mission is scheduled for Q4 2024.
It accommodates scientific payloads of four different organisations within total six different experiment systems in various sizes. Three of the payloads (JACKS, micACTin, LiFiCo) are flown under ESA contract, and one payload (DUST-II) developed by JAXA is flown under DLR funding.
In addition, there a small payload from Stockholm University and one student developed experiment from Linköping (SE) and Colorado Springs (US) universities.

While the forthcoming SubOrbital Express 4 mission is fully booked, the work for filling up the subsequent SubOrbital Express mission scheduled for 2025 is currently on-going. The payload will this time consist of the Shared Module with room for up to 8 small 1U-sized payloads and by ESA funded experiments.

This presentation will provide additional information on the payload configurations, the mission performance as well as details on the experiments with their requirements on the mission

The International Commercial Experiment Cubes (ICE Cubes) service set up by Space Applications Services provides fast, direct and affordable access to space for research, technology and education. The service facilitates a frequent and regular ‘launch-and-return’ capability to/from the International Space Station (ISS), and offers a unique real-time interaction capability.
The ICE Cubes Service makes use of the ICE Cubes Facility, permanently installed within the Columbus module of the ISS. Since its launch in May 2018, over 25 payloads and experiments have been successfully flown and operated using the ICF. These included projects focused on protein crystallization, plant biology, IOD/IOV of technologies, an artificial intelligence and machine learning server, a media set that allows direct interaction between the user and the astronauts on a commercial basis, and an interactive artwork. Payloads can be developed by the customer or made available by the ICE Cubes Service as ready-to-fly hardware that can be reused over the course of multiple missions
The ICE Cubes Facility can accommodate-plug-and-play Experiment Cubes of various form factors or large inserts, and provides the functional interfaces to the ISS infrastructure for powering and controlling the payloads. The use of a sliding Framework and “plug-and-play” Experiment Cubes, or sliding inserts, with standardized interface connectors simplifies the system, thus minimizing crew time for installation and removal. Depending on the specific needs, experiment data can be downlinked in (near) real-time, deferred to a later time or physically downloaded with a return vehicle from orbit via data storage media. The ICF also provides Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection for payloads that may operate outside of the facility. The ICF can also operate centre aisle payloads and provide those payloads with data and power.
In addition to the Experiment Cubes flown until now, other currently funded and under development initiatives include a platform to support microfluidic organ-on-a-chip devices, a magneto-acoustic 3D bioprinter, and a multi-user platform to culture tumours, organoids, and spheroids for high-throughput drug screening onboard the ISS.

The Exploration Company is a French-German company with the mission to democratize space exploration for space & non space industries. To realize this mission, The Exploration Company develops, manufactures, and operates Nyx, a modular and reusable orbital vehicle which can eventually be refueled in orbit. Nyx provides various in-orbit services to Low-Earth Orbit like carrying cargo in its first version, with the potential to carry humans and cargo up to the Moon in its future version. The technical bricks of Nyx are built with open interfaces: they are available on a Space Store to enable space & non-space companies to use them and develop new applications.
Our missions to LEO and to the Moon enable researchers, institutions and companies to send their microgravity research into space for up to 6 months and then have it returned to them back in Earth.
In 2028 we will launch our mission to the Moon, giving researchers the opportunity to conduct experiments on the Lunar surface.
In our talk, we would like to highlight the upcoming missions in 2024 launched by Ariane 6 and in 2025 launched by SpaceX with scientific payloads on board.
We want to emphasise that our goal is to make space affordable and accessible for research across all industries and to prove this by showing the range of experiments that are now booked to fly on our mission in 2025 which include life science, food and beverage and cosmetic related studies.
We would like to present Nyx as a new platform to perform scientific research in LEO to the Moon and present Nyx' capabilities (pricing, implementation partners, power, communication and late access).

Introduction/Background
Drop Towers are the ideal platform for microgravity experiments on short time scales which demand high accessibility and flexibility. The request for increased repetition rates without losing microgravity quality leads to novel drop tower concepts. In particular guided platforms offer the additional advantage to provide partial gravity. Experiments and technology developments conducted under Lunar and Martian gravity conditions are becoming more important for human exploration, e.g. to our next destination – the Moon.

Method/Experiment
Since the beginning of the year 2022, the GraviTower Bremen Pro represents ZARM’s new next-generation drop tower system, which makes use of a rail-guided rope drive being able to perform 20 experiments per hour. Its technology is based on a commercial hydraulic winch system with more than 4000 hp of engine power that moves a rail-guided drag shield in a 16 m high tower, upwards and downwards. With its novel and sophisticated Release-Caging-Mechanism (RCM), the actively driven GraviTower located in the integration hall of the Bremen Drop Tower is capable of controlling heavy payloads of up to 500 kg in a very smooth and precise manner. The RCM developed and patented by ZARM also enables a fast and reliable decoupling as well as re-coupling of the experiment capsule inside the drag shield.

Result
In this contribution, we will give an overview of ongoing development projects on the GraviTower. The first project is dedicated to the next version of the RCM aiming for precise partial gravity capabilities. First demonstrations of lunar gravity levels were performed with the current RCM design, demanding that the experiment stay connected to the drive. The resulting high vibration levels will be reduced with the novel RCMmm concept (RCM Moon / Mars), based on an active force control system. Since the RCMmm will ensure a decoupling in the vertical-translational direction, low residual acceleration levels are expected for partial gravity.
The second project concentrates on the automation of the facility and precise time-synchronization. In particular the implementation of machine learning (ML) algorithms for optimization purposes benefits from the high repetition rate of the GraviTower.

Conclusion
With these novel aspects, the GraviTower facility becomes the ideal testbed for partial gravity experiments, while the high repetition rates can be exploited for future big scientific data handling. Thus, the easy excess and cost-efficient GraviTower platform will pave the way into space for a broad field of research.

Drones provide lower cost and improved accessibility access to reduced gravity (RG) conditions than traditional systems. Drones offer a lower cost solution and allow the possibility of partial gravity, at the cost of lower payload capacity. This shows that there are trade-offs when selecting RG systems for experiments. This study will evaluate existing comparison metrics of g-duration, g-level, and g-quantity, as well as discussing introduction of alternate metrics.
Current metrics of g-duration, g-level, and g-quality are used in understanding the operational characteristics of RG systems. However, the assessment of g-quality as a metric reveals limitations, particularly in accurately representing phenomena due to time-based variations in acceleration measurements.
G-level and g-duration refer to the acceleration that can be reached by an RG system, as well as the amount of time it is able to maintain it. G-quality refers to the error between target g-level and actual g-level measured during experiments and is usually presented as the maximum and minimum error. A series of acceleration datasets from AirZeroG flights were analysed by finding maximum and minimum accelerations and calculating standard deviations for each manoeuvre. The use of standard deviations has shown to provide a clearer distinction between the g-quality of sets of acceleration data as opposed to using purely minimum and maximum values, as it reduces the impact of singular peaks of accelerations on the quality . This is beneficial both when quantifying the performance of an individual system, but also for comparison against others.
Beyond performance parameters, cost and accessibility play pivotal roles in system selection. Accessibility encompasses the technical barrier to entry of conducting experiments and the availability of testing locations and services. This factor significantly influences the overall feasibility and practicality of utilizing RG systems. The cost of performing experiments on different systems will drive decision-making based on budget, as well as the expected addition of value to the experimental campaign of any project using such systems.
Moreover, payload capacity emerges as a crucial consideration, with historical data serving as a valuable resource for comparison. Understanding the payload mass and volume capabilities of RG providers will again impact decision-making, as these may not fit within limits of each RG system.
Work within this project will continue to quantify metrics where possible, as well as providing holistic comparisons of systems providing reduced gravity conditions.