Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 335, Small Payloads Big Science. I'm Ken Appel and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more.

Cargo deliveries to the International Space Station are pretty significant missions in themselves.

Thousands of pounds of science, research, hardware, and supplies, including food, all have to come

together to not only hitch a ride on board the launch, but keep on schedule so they don't miss that ride.

Now think in a more granular sense, though sometimes hundreds of different payloads that

make up the cargo deliveries each have their own missions involving researchers and students that make up teams across the world

that work together to make them happen.

Some of that research is conducted on Station.

Other times, the Station serves as a platform to deploy capabilities.

Fresh off the heels of NASA's latest cargo delivery to the International Space Station

that carried more than 6,000 pounds to the orbiting lab,

we sat down with Max Brummel, the Mission Manager for

Nanorax Cubesad Deployer 27. This involves seven different shoebox-sized

missions in one that were deployed from the station into low Earth orbit.

But don't let that shoebox-sized reference fool you.

These small but mighty payloads are called cube-sats

and each have big science mission and objectives of their own.

We dive in today on the end-to-end process from how missions are

selected scheduled for launch then eventually deployed. And good news?

While we recorded this episode shortly after launch, all seven cube-sats have now

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