Photo by Reggie Beehner
Twyman Clements, president and CEO of Space Tango, can monitor what's happening on the International Space Station via a bank of monitors in his office.
A Lexington startup has enjoyed early growth thanks to an unlikely business model: helping clients conduct research outside the Earth’s gravitational field.
Space Tango is one of just a handful of private companies with permanent space reserved on the International Space Station, the low-orbit research laboratory that’s circled the Earth since 1998.
Space Tango, launched in July 2016, is a one-stop shop of sorts for those looking to conduct experiments on the space station, where gravity is diminished by some 90 percent.
“When you remove one of the four forces of nature — gravity — that changes the dynamics for all kinds of research and development,” said Twyman Clements, president and CEO of Space Tango, who started the company with two of his engineering buddies from the University of Kentucky’s graduate school.
The benefits of a micro-gravity research environment are catching on and propelling Space Tango’s growth. The company, which initially worked mostly with academic researchers, has seen its clientele expand to where it’s now split almost evenly between academics and big manufacturers. Research projects include everything from semiconductor components to optical implants to pharmaceutical ingredients, Clements said.
Photo by Reggie Beehner
Photo by Reggie Beehner
Photo by Reggie Beehner
The company recently doubled its capacity aboard the space station — adding a second Tango Lab, as it’s called. And it also will be collaborating with the NASA Kentucky EPSCoR program, which is hosted by UK, to conduct a research project on small “swarm” satellites. The widening interest has prompted Space Tango, which currently occupies an office on Short Street, to consider a move to larger environs where it could house a more sophisticated biological lab.
“We see exponential growth potential,” said Kris Kimel, chairman of Space Tango’s board and president of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation. “Lower orbit research and design really is an unexplored frontier. And in many cases we’re going to find that it’s far more efficient” with regard to the manufacture of certain materials.
Much of Space Tango’s success owes to NASA’s push to commercialize the space industry, which opened the door for such companies as SpaceX and Orbital to drive new innovation and increase the number of rockets bound for the space station.
Space Tango, through NASA’s space act agreement, has room reserved on the space station for two suitcase-sized labs, each of which houses a dozen or more smaller aluminum cubes, called payloads, that harbor clients’ experiments. While the cubes may look like simple metal boxes, inside they hold a sophisticated array of engineering — everything from miniature video cameras to sensors that measure and control the cube’s environmental conditions.
Photo by Reggie Beehner
Jason Rexroat, an electrical engineer at Space Tango, tests a customized circuit board that will be used in a client's payload sent to the International Space Station.
“We shrink a whole system into a cube — all the control circuitry and software and other components,” Clements said, adding that the cubes are fully automated. All the astronauts have to do is plug the lab into the space station’s power and data feed upon arrival. Once the lab is activated, clients enjoy real-time feedback on their projects, allowing them to watch and monitor their experiments from Earth via the internet.
The cost to get a cube to the space station ranges from $25,000 to $500,000, depending on the complexity of the research project. New Tango Labs are sent up on rockets four or five times a year, and returning materials often can be recycled on new projects to help reduce costs.
Currently, the company is scrambling to prepare for two separate rocket launches in November, which will send some 18 research payloads to the space station.
Once the lab is activated, clients enjoy real-time feedback on their projects, allowing them to watch and monitor their experiments from Earth via the internet.
“We don’t skip many rocket launches,” Clements said.
Although the company maintains office space in several states — Virginia and Florida, among others — near launch sites, Clements said he doesn’t feel pressure to relocate the company. Advancements in both micro-technology and on-demand manufacturing have made it possible to run an operation such as theirs from virtually anywhere. Clements said a lot of these advancements owe to the explosive rise of the smart phone industry, which spurred a wave of technological innovation in miniature components, such as circuit boards and video cameras.
Space Tango’s engineers assemble each payload cube in the company’s Lexington office, designing and building their own components to fit NASA’s strict engineering specifications. They use 3-D printers and on-demand manufacturers to fabricate materials and parts.
“Without those, we wouldn’t exist,” Clements said.
Although the company’s future is difficult to predict, Clements said he envisions a day when manufacturers will look to move some of their production lines into orbit. And he’s optimistic that when the time comes, Space Tango’s engineers will be ready to help make it happen.