ICE Cubes facility

The ICE Cubes facility in ESA’s space laboratory Columbus offers plug-and-play installation for cube-sized experiments that relay experiment data back to Earth through the International Space Station’s infrastructure.

The ICE Cubes service is based on a partnership between Space Applications Services and ESA and is part of ESA’s human and robotic exploration strategy to ensure access to the weightless research possibilities in low Earth orbit.
The ICE Cubes service allows experiments to run for over four months in space. Astronaut time and expert advice come as part of the package and experiments and samples can be returned to Earth for analysis.