For this cover story, writer Hope Reese explored Kentucky-based space-as-a-service company Space Tango’s microgravity experiments on the International Space Station, and their potential to power new innovations in medicine. This download provides the magazine version of the article as a free PDF for registered TechRepublic and ZDNet members. The online version of this story is available here.

From the story:

Early on Sunday morning, February 19, 2017, a gang of about a dozen onlookers––including two high school students, two academic advisors, and a team of engineers––gathered at the newly renovated Launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL, eagerly bracing for a rocket launch.

The rocket they were watching––SpaceX’s Falcon 9––was carrying a special payload from SpaceTango, a startup that helps businesses and researchers design and send experiments to the International Space Station (ISS). Falcon 9 would deliver the group’s payload to the TangoLab-1 facility on the ISS. It was Space Tango’s first official attempt to use the ISS to conduct experiments for researchers and clients as part of its business.

“When it boosted,” Jennifer Carter told me, “we felt the three sonic booms.” Carter, the assistant director of Morehead State University’s Craft Academy for Excellence in Science, had been an advisor to the two students at the launch, Danielle Gibson and Will Casto, all year. And, Michael E. Fultz, an associate professor of biology at Morehead, was a mentor to the students. The group worked with Space Tango to develop a way to send their culture biology experiment to the space station.

Why did they send it to space? They wanted to see what would happen when gravity was removed from the equation, and what it could mean for biology and healthcare.

Download the PDF to read the rest of the story.