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Nazaré

Autonomous space laboratory

See every partRead the 2022 concept
The Nazaré spacecraft in orbit in daylight, seen from above and to one side, its two blue solar wings open over the Atlantic, with clouds and the coast of Portugal below and the curve of the Earth behind

Nazaré is a spacecraft that takes a robotic laboratory to orbit and brings its products back to Earth. It runs a crystal growth study for 30 days with nobody on board, then returns the lab to the ground inside a capsule 1.14 m across.

30 days
in orbit, 28 of them for science
48 cells
of crystals, imaged twice a day
1.14 m
return capsule, PICA heat shield
308 kg
at launch, with a 25 percent reserve

A laboratory with nobody on board.

Forty-eight experiments start themselves on the first day, are photographed twice a day for a month and come home at 20 °C. No crew and no station: the lab does every step itself.

The robotic lab opened in steps: the skin and pressure barrel cut away to show the white wheel of cells, the microscope arm above it and pale phase-change bricks docked round the frame
The lab opened in steps, from its skin in to the cell wheel and the microscope. It weighs 18.0 kg, 20.4 kg with growth.

Day one: the cells start themselves.

A cam ring pushes each cell's sled 5 mm, its capillaries pierce a septum and the solutions meet. Three pins hold every mechanism through launch, entry and landing.

Close view of the rim of the cell wheel: radial cells, each a sled holding a pair of glass capillaries in clear potting, closed by a thin white septum

A picture of every cell, twice a day.

The wheel steps each cell under the microscope, which images it in five tiles and three focal planes with a 4 MP camera.

The microscope head on its slide above the wheel of cells

20 °C, all the way home.

Four phase-change bricks dock on the frame beside two sensor pods. Before release the spacecraft's coolant brings the lab to 19 °C; once it is cut, the bricks hold it between 18 and 22 °C for eight hours, through entry and landing.

Eight pale rectangular modules standing in a ring: the phase-change bricks, sensor pods and blanks that dock on the lab frame

48 cells in one cassette.

On the bench the optics lid and the thermal cap come off and the sealed cassette lifts out whole, off three locator pins.

The flat white round cassette that holds the 48 cells
48
experiments, started on the first day
2,880
cell images: 48 cells, twice a day, 30 days
8 h
held between 18 and 22 °C after release
16
mechanisms, swept through 584 poses without a clash

One size, not two.

In orbit, crystals grow without the settling and convection that act on them on the ground. When Merck crystallised its cancer drug pembrolizumab on the ISS, the crystals came out at one size, about 39 µm. The same conditions on the ground gave two, 13 and 102 µm, in a thicker suspension.

In orbit.

One size, about 39 µm.

Illustration of a dark-field microscope field full of small faceted crystals, all about the same size

On the ground.

Two sizes, about 13 and 102 µm.

Illustration of the same microscope field with many tiny crystals and a few much larger ones

Both fields are drawn at one scale, 800 µm across, from the sizes Reichert and colleagues published in npj Microgravity in 2019. They are illustrations: the crystal shape is generic, not the drug's.

What comes back.

Crystals.

Grown in the 48 sealed cells and returned in their cassette, held at temperature all the way down.

Illustration of a few clear faceted crystals on a grey satin floor, lit from behind and from the side

43,200

frames.

Every cell, twice a day for 30 days, in five tiles and three focal planes: a time-lapse of each experiment.

The highlights.

Ten thrusters. Four printed pods.

One pod at each corner of the upper deck. Four reaction wheels point the spacecraft; the thrusters steer the burn and unload the wheels.

A printed silver pod shaped like a rounded wedge with three small thrusters pointing out of it in different directions

228.2 m/s

of delta-v.

From 31.85 kg of hydrazine and an MR-107V class engine, against the 219.6 m/s needed to come home from 600 km.

Illustration of the main engine firing in orbit: the small engine on the top deck inside the launch ring, glowing faintly, its exhaust rising as a pale column

58 litres on eight struts.

Carbon fibre struts from the tank's poles out to the corners of the box.

A silver spherical tank held by eight thin struts that run from fittings at its two poles out to corner fittings

Thirteen tiles of PICA.

55 mm thick at the centre, with gaps between the tiles as on Orion.

The capsule's heat shield seen from below: a shallow grey dish made of tiles

Two wings, two leaves each.

Opened in orbit by springs at the root and at the fold.

A solar wing of two leaves of blue cells, hinged in the middle

Folded for launch.

The wings lie flat against the box, held by release bolts. The stack fits the rideshare envelope with 6 mm of length to spare.

The stack in its launch configuration: the box with its wings folded flat against two sides, the launch ring on top and the capsule's cone under the box

Open in orbit.

A box of honeycomb panels, 684 × 761 × 735 mm, with the capsule on a clamp band at one end and the launch ring at the other.

The spacecraft with both solar wings open, two leaves of blue cells each side of the box, the cone of the return capsule under it
The Nazaré spacecraft as a dark silhouette at sunrise, the Sun at the Earth's limb to its right with a lens flare, city lights on the night side below
Sunrise over Portugal: the Sun at the Earth's limb behind the spacecraft.

1,409 °C outside. 20 °C inside.

The capsule meets the atmosphere at about 7.9 km/s, heat shield first. Five minutes later the face of the shield reaches 1,409 °C at its centre. Behind 55 mm of PICA the lab never leaves 20 °C.

The return capsule in entry over the night side of the Earth, heat shield first and glowing orange, a thin bright shock layer round it, the hot flow behind it closing to a narrow neck and streaming away as a long orange and red trail
Peak heating. The shield glows at the temperature its thermal model computes. The shock stands about 4 cm off the dish and the flow behind the capsule closes about 1.5 m aft, as it does behind blunt bodies at orbital speed; the colour of the gas is drawn, not computed.
1,409 °C
the shield's face at peak heating
513 kW/m²
peak heating, worst simulated return
202 °C
structure behind the shield, near landing
20 °C
the lab, all the way down
The capsule cut in half in false colour at peak heating: a thin yellow-white skin on the heat shield's face, purple everywhere inside
The capsule cut in half, coloured by the temperatures the study's heat shield model (1-D conduction through each zone of PICA on the worst simulated entry) and lab model compute at that moment. Parts with no thermal model are left out.
20 °C100 °C200 °C500 °C1,000 °C1,400 °C

Take a closer look.

Each shell opened a little less than the one outside it, so the tank, the wheels and the lab stay whole.

Cutaway of the whole stack: the box opened in a wedge to show the silver tank on its struts and the reaction wheels inside, and below it the capsule opened in steps down to the lab
The whole stack, opened in steps.
Cutaway of the return capsule under the floor of the service module: the PICA shell and its structure opened widest, the parachute bay and drogue pack opened less, and the lab inside
The capsule, from the heat shield in to the lab. At entry, from the top of the insertion band, 99 percent of simulated returns stay under 8.9 g and 510 kW/m².

Every part.

The whole spacecraft taken apart and laid out on one floor, sorted by system.

Every part of the Nazaré spacecraft laid flat on a dark clean-room floor and seen from above, in zones taped in yellow: the capsule's heat shield and backshell, the box's white walls and decks, gold insulation blankets, two blue solar wings, the propellant tank and four thruster pods, the reaction wheels, the robotic lab's parts on a blue mat, small parts in a tray, and a tool tray beside a 1 m scale bar
Every part of the Nazaré spacecraft laid flat on a dark clean-room floor and seen from above, in zones taped in yellow: the capsule's heat shield and backshell, the box's white walls and decks, gold insulation blankets, two blue solar wings, the propellant tank and four thruster pods, the reaction wheels, the robotic lab's parts on a blue mat, small parts in a tray, and a tool tray beside a 1 m scale bar
A render from the CAD, not a photograph: every piece as drawn, laid flat, the panels and blankets taken off the box's sides and the wings opened. The tools are stand-ins; the bar beside them is 1 m long.
Each part on its own
  • The service module alone in a dark studio, a box with a solar wing of two dark leaves on each side

    Service module

    3713 × 818 × 957 mm

  • The return capsule seen from below, a dark dish of heat shield under a grey cone

    Return capsule

    1158 × 1158 × 540 mm

  • Two square white deck panels, one above the other, joined at their corners by four thin angles, with a round hole in each

    Decks

    684 × 761 × 735 mm

  • An open white box of four wall panels with two small doors on one side

    Walls

    684 × 761 × 711 mm

  • A silver ring with a thinner machined ring on its top flange, standing on a flat scalloped doubler

    Launch ring

    650 × 650 × 107 mm

  • A silver spherical tank held by eight thin struts that run from fittings at its two poles out to corner fittings

    Propellant tank

    660 × 710 × 492 mm

  • A small silver rocket engine on its mount plate, the nozzle above a dark round shield

    Main engine

    260 × 260 × 218 mm

  • A printed silver pod shaped like a rounded wedge with three small thrusters pointing out of it in different directions

    Thruster pod

    184 × 182 × 164 mm

  • Thin silver propellant lines branching from one valve string out to four corners

    Propellant feed

    622 × 603 × 533 mm

  • Two short silver lines, each ending in a fill valve

    Fill and drain

    347 × 721 × 28 mm

  • A pale blue reaction wheel housing bolted to a machined plate with two pocketed webs

    Reaction wheel

    180 × 172 × 163 mm

  • A tall beige battery box on a bent sheet tray

    Battery

    157 × 139 × 290 mm

  • A beige box on a flat backplate

    Power unit

    181 × 269 × 223 mm

  • Two pale blue rectangular boxes, one standing and one lying

    Avionics

    75 × 326 × 190 mm

  • A flat solar wing of two dark rectangular leaves side by side, hinged in the middle

    Solar wing

    1503 × 30 × 798 mm

  • Four cream shield panels standing on posts round an open square

    Debris shields

    660 × 737 × 516 mm

  • Soft, wrinkled gold insulation blankets, two bands round a box and one whole wall, round a silver sphere

    Insulation

    700 × 789 × 711 mm

  • A silver box with two thin copper lines running from it

    Lab pump set

    543 × 538 × 216 mm

  • A silver ring beam seen from below with a clamp band and small pushers round its rim

    Capsule clamp

    580 × 580 × 94 mm

  • A shallow dark dish of heat shield tiles seen from below

    Heat shield

    1140 × 1140 × 169 mm

  • A grey truncated cone of eight panels, open at the top

    Backshell

    1133 × 1133 × 369 mm

  • A grey truncated cone with an open top over a dark dish

    Aeroshell

    1158 × 1158 × 540 mm

  • Ten small silver lugs spaced round a wide circle

    Knee joint

    959 × 1104 × 46 mm

  • A silver shallow cone with a copper ring and a round cover on top

    Parachute bay

    795 × 795 × 186 mm

  • Two silver rings joined by four guide blocks

    Landing carriage

    462 × 462 × 148 mm

  • Small silver blocks and brackets spread round a ring

    Capsule equipment

    1013 × 670 × 375 mm

  • A flat white disc inside a silver flange ring with small nuts round it

    Aft cover

    570 × 569 × 27 mm

  • An octagonal grey frame with pale pink and grey modules docked on its faces

    Robotic lab

    354 × 352 × 191 mm

  • An octagonal grey frame with struts angled out from its sides

    Lab frame

    352 × 352 × 180 mm

  • A plain grey cylinder

    Lab skin

    360 × 360 × 240 mm

  • A grey optics block and objective on a carriage that runs along a rail

    Microscope

    188 × 44 × 64 mm

  • A round silver drum with small sensor blocks above it

    Lab core

    218 × 236 × 160 mm

  • A flat white round cassette

    Cassette

    203 × 200 × 20 mm

  • Eight pale rectangular modules standing in a ring

    Lab modules

    341 × 341 × 144 mm

Tech specs.

Mission

Orbit
Circular, 500 to 600 km, as a rideshare payload on a 24 inch ring
Duration
30 days, 28 of them for science
Payload
A sealed 48-cell crystallisation study, imaged twice a day

Service module

Box
684 × 761 × 735 mm, honeycomb panels
At launch
307.8 kg with a 25 percent reserve; the service module 124.1 kg current best estimate
Main engine
MR-107V class, hydrazine
Thrusters
10, MR-111G class, in four printed pods
Propellant
31.85 kg of hydrazine in a 58 litre tank
Delta-v
228.2 m/s available, 219.6 m/s needed from 600 km
Attitude
4 reaction wheels
Power
2 wings of 2 leaves, 2 batteries

Capsule

Size
1.14 m across, 540 mm tall
Mass
120 kg with a 15 percent growth allowance
Heat shield
PICA, 13 tiles and 8 gores, 55 mm thick at the centre
Entry, 99th percentile
8.9 g and 510 kW/m², against limits of 10 g and 800 kW/m²
Landing
Drogue, main parachute, four aluminium honeycomb crush cores

Lab

Frame
Octagonal, eight docking faces
Mass
18.0 kg, 20.4 kg with growth
Experiment
48 cells on a wheel under a microscope
Year
2026
Field
Aerospace
Role
Concept, design and systems engineering
A render of the Sun rising over the Earth's limb, seen from orbit, with city lights on the night side

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