For more than 20 years, BioServe Space Technologies — a NASA-supported center on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus — has sent its customers’ science research aloft aboard space shuttles.
The shuttle Endeavour was hoisted into the heavens Monday, taking along another BioServe payload consisting of banana spiders, fruit flies and seeds from a mustard-family plant.
The work will continue next year — after the final shuttle flight this summer — with commercial carriers, said BioServe director Louis Stodieck.
“SpaceX and Orbital both have demonstration flights scheduled for later this year and will start up commercial resupply of the space station early next year,” Stodieck said. “We are manifesting payloads through NASA on those carriers.”
About 1,500 teachers and 90,000 students are participating in the BioServe projects on Endeavour’s last mission, including several schools in the Denver area.
Also on board Endeavour is an instrument built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder that may ease landing on asteroids and docking.
Called a “vision-navigation sensor,” the instrument was developed by Ball, NASA and Lockheed Martin. The instrument could be used on NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle, which Lockheed is building as a shuttle replacement and for deep-space missions.
