EMXYS of Spain, Texas A&M, Planetary Science Institute Join
The Team
At the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC)
2012 in Palo Alto, California, XCOR Aerospace announced that EMXYS
of Spain, Texas A&M's Space Engineering Research Center, and
the Planetary Science Institute have joined XCOR's payload
processing sales channel for the Lynx suborbital vehicle. The new
members of the XCOR team will provide services to the research,
scientific, educational, engineering, and medical markets that are
using the XCOR Lynx suborbital reusable launch vehicle for
experiments and investigations.
They join XCOR's existing payload integration channel partners
including: the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio and
Boulder, NanoRacks of Washington DC, Spaceflight Services of
Tukwila, Washington, Space Expedition Curacao, Yecheon Astro Space
Center of South Korea, Cosmica of France, and African Space
Institute in South Africa.
The payload integrators will sell Lynx research flight services
and assist in creating standardization in research hardware for the
suborbital market. "We are very excited to have assembled this
incredibly capable team of payload integrators to service the
worldwide suborbital research market," said Andrew Nelson, XCOR
Chief Operating Officer and Vice President for Business
Development, "and we will be adding to this capable team in the
coming months and years."
Each payload integration specialist firm will help facilitate
and provision flight services on the Lynx by ensuring that end
users understand the packaging, environmental, safety, operational
flight profile(s) and interface (physical, electrical and data)
requirements of the Lynx for both automated experiments not
requiring user intervention during flight, and those experiments
when the scientist accompanies the payload to the edge of space.
The integrators will provide a variety of additional value added
services depending on their individual service offering and
customer needs, including, but not limited to fabrication, test and
qualification of experiments for the Lynx environment.
XCOR will be responsible for: (1) developing and periodically
updating the Lynx interface control document, payload user's guide
and other payload related processes and procedures in consultation
with the payload integration specialists, end customers and
regulators; (2) operating an annual Lynx payload user's group
conference to solicit feedback and promulgate best practices across
the payload integrators network and user community; (3) addressing
any specific non-standard needs identified by payload integration
specialists and their customers such as special flight trajectories
or unique vehicle integration needs; (4) any special licensing or
regulatory actions pertaining to the flight; and (5) with the
integration specialist and customer, performing a final safety and
pre-flight review meeting before the mission is flown and a
de-briefing of the mission after flight.