GeneSat-1 is a fully automated, miniature spaceflight system that provides life support for bacterium. The system was launched into orbit on December 16, 2006 from Wallops Flight Facility

Wallops Flight Facility

Wallops Flight Facility , located on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, is operated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, primarily as a rocket launch site to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other U.S. government agencies...

. GeneSat-1 began to transmit data on its first pass over the mission's California ground station. The nanosatellite  contains onboard micro-laboratory systems that such as sensors and optical systems that can detect proteins that are the products of specific genetic activity. Knowledge gained from GeneSat-1 is intended to aid scientific understanding of how spaceflight affects the human body.

Weighing 5 kilograms, the miniature laboratory was a secondary payload on an Air Force four-stage Minotaur 1 rocket that delivered the Air Force TacSat 2 satellite to orbit.
In the development of the GeneSat satellite class (at a fraction of what it normally costs to conduct a mission in space), Ames Research Center (Small Spacecraft Office) collaborated with organisations in Industry and also universities local to the center. It is NASA's first fully automated, self-contained biological spaceflight experiment on a satellite of its size.

External links

• a list from the NASA database retrieved 08:55(UTC) October 24, 2011
• GeneSat-1 mission dashboard Santa Clara University Robotics Systems Laboratory retrieved 08:19 24.10.2011