Spaceflight Hardware for High-Fidelity, Reproducible Science
Rhodium sources, builds, and operates NASA-approved/NASA-certified space science hardware. Our hardware portfolio enables reproducible and scalable biology, chemistry, and advanced materials research aboard the ISS and commercial space platforms. Our systems are plug-and-play, highly configurable, and designed to support high sample numbers, replication, and rapid mission execution.
Built for:
- Biomanufacturing & synthetic biology
- Aerospace Medicine
- Pharmaceuticals
- Cell culture (stem cells, human and mammalian cells)
- Microbiology (bacteria, fungi, microeukaryotes)
- Virology
- Protein & chemical crystallization
- Polymer chemistry & chemical mixtures
- Plant & photosynthetic growth systems
- Regolith and In-situ resource utilization studies
- Advanced materials
- Filtration and fluid mixing
Rhodium Science Chamber Facility™
The Rhodium Science Chamber Facility™ is a modular, flight-proven research architecture composed of interchangeable sample chambers and carriers. Configurations can be flown independently or combined within a single mission to tailor sample formats, volumes, and experimental layouts. Rhodium Science Chambers can be configured to fly hundreds of samples in a single mission.
Rhodium Cryotube™
This foundational Rhodium Science Chamber configuration supports small to large fluid volumes for liquid culturing, preservation, and sampling for post-flight analysis.
Use cases: microbial culture, biomanufacturing intermediates, chemical samples, multi-timepoint preservation
Photo Credit: NASA. Astronaut Dr. Kate Rubins operating the Rhodium Science Chamber for a microbial growth mission.
Rhodium Biocuvette™
This self-contained Rhodium Science Chamber, the Rhodium Biocuvette™, can be configured for sampling at various time points in orbit.
Use cases: plant and algal growth, photosynthetic biology, microbial dynamics, synthetic biology, optical assays
Photo Credit: NASA. Rhodium Biocuvettes™ germinating several seeds for an ISS plant mission
Rhodium Fluid & Culture Bags™
These Science Chambers can support small to large volumes for liquid culture, storage, processing, and subsampling in orbit.
Use cases: liquid cell culture, biomedical, microbial and algal growth, chemical mixtures, media optimization, filtration studies, fluid dynamics research
Rhodium Petri Dish™
This Science Chamber configuration supports solid-media and surface-growth experiments in space.
Use cases: microbial growth, fungal growth, biofilms, colony morphology, material–biology interactions, pharmacology
Rhodium Well Plate™
This Science Chamber configuration supports options for high-throughput screening in space.
Use cases: screening assays, synthetic biology libraries, small-volume chemistry, optimization studies, organoid growth, drug-interaction studies, PCR-workflows
Rhodium Variable Gravity Centrifuge Facility™
The Rhodium Variable Gravity Centrifuge Facility supports replicated culturing across multiple time points and gravities: microgravity, Lunar, Martian, and Earth. Recently, the Rhodium Centrifuge conducted the largest, in-space biomanufacturing ever performed with the DARPA B-SURE program. Over the course of 4 missions, conducted in less than 2 years, the centrifuge ran hundreds of samples, across multiple time points, and across 5 academic teams (upcoming publication in Nature Biotech).
Rhodium Variable Gravity Centrifuge™
The Rhodium Centrifuge is currently on the ISS and suitable to test a wide array of samples at Earth, Lunar and Martian gravities. It is compatible with multiple Rhodium Science Chamber configurations for high-throughput testing in space.
Use case: biomanufacturing, Lunar gravity, Martian gravity, Earth gravity, plant growth, microbial culturing, centrifugation, comparative space-Earth controls
Photo: NASA. The Rhodium Variable Gravity Centrifuge™ in the copula of the ISS after completing the largest space biomanufacturing program.
Rhodium Incubation Vessel™
The Rhodium Incubation Vessel™ is suitable for a wide array of organisms and is compatible with the Rhodium Variable Gravity Centrifuge™ for Lunar and Martian-gravity studies. The Incubation Vessel can support various incubation temperatures and preservation profiles within a single controlled environment.
Use cases: Lunar gravity-response biology, Martian gravity-response biology, larger plant growth studies, biomanufacturing, fermentation, scale-up and media optimization, bulk liquid culture, chemical reactions, larger plant growth, and long-duration incubation experiments
Photo: Astronaut Sunita Williams pictured with the Rhodium Multi-layer Containment sleeve (left) and the Rhodium Incubation Vessel (right).
Rhodium Chem-Bio Facility™
The Rhodium Chem-Bio Process Facility™ is a fluid handling system currently operating as the only large-batch, large volume equipment for sample exchange and flow abord the ISS. Several Rhodium Fluid Transfer Cassettes™ (one cassette pictured below) can be installed into the Rhodium Chem-Bio Facility at a time for high-throughput testing.
Use cases: media exchange, cell culture, chemical reactions, microbial growth, filtration, fluid dynamics
Photo: The Rhodium Cassette™ is enables constant fluid flow, cell culture mixing, media feeding, sub-sampling, and multi-generational growth experiments.
Photo: Rhodium Biocuvette Growth Facility™ accommodating large-scale plant growth
Rhodium Biocuvette Growth Facility™
This Facility supports many Rhodium Biocuvettes™ and is designed for efficient sample removal, sample replacement, and optical workflows.
Use cases: seed germination studies, microbial growth analysis, phenotyping, comparative plant research, light response experiments, algal growth studies, multi-time point sampling
Photo: Rhodium Science TempLog™ monitoring Rhodium Science Chambers™ aboard the ISS
Rhodium Science TempLog™ — Temperature and Radiation Logging
This temperature and radiation logger is designed to monitor your samples in space, providing unprecedented continuous thermal and radiation data throughout the entire mission. Currently, this is the only commercially available capability for science missions inside the ISS.
Use cases: thermal exposure tracking, incubation verification, preservation validation, and experiment correlation, radiation impact studies, biological response correlation, materials testing, and mission environmental characterization
FAQ
Contact
To discuss fit, sample formats, timelines, and mission integration:
LEO.Life@RhodiumScientific.com