Sarah Sybert
The University of Alabama at Birmingham has been awarded the Cold Stowage II contract from NASA. Under the potential $48.3 million, single award, cost-no-fee contract, the university will deliver a suite of freezers that will maintain a controlled temperature environment for science samples aboard the International Space Station (ISS), as well as to and from low-Earth orbit.
UAB will provide maintenance, sustaining engineering, integration and operations of the freezers. The work will support researchers“™ objectives involving temperature-controlled science. The hardware used will maintain sample integrity while at ISS and during transit aboard current and future visiting spacecraft.
The University of Alabama“™s suite of freezers includes Polar, Glacier, Iceberg, Cryo Chiller, Glovebox Freezer, and MERLIN.
In 2018, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Engineering Innovation and Technology Development research group was awarded a multi-year contract from NASA to provide and maintain cold-stowage units for the ISS.
The group has designed and built a series of freezers capable of maintaining temperatures as low as negative 160 degrees Celsius. Each line of freezers meets specific cold-stowage demands, from storing scientific samples to serving as galley refrigerator/freezers for the ISS crew.
The new award contributes to the University of Alabama at Birmingham“™s history of supporting the agency“™s scientific research and development.
