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How an Unlikely Partnership between a Space Agency and an Insulated Thermal Bottle Company Created Innovations in the History of Space Environment Utilization
TIGER CORP
What do your insulated thermal bottle and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have in common? More than you might think.
In September 2018, Japan launched the Kounotori 7 into outer space on a mission to supply the International Space Station (ISS). But the mission had another objective: to transport sensitive experimental samples back from the space station to earth. To accomplish this, JAXA needed a container that could keep its precious contents at a stable temperature while withstanding the impossibly inhospitable conditions of space, a re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, and a crash landing into the ocean at a force of 40 g. This was no easy task. Until this moment, no such feat had ever been attempted.
But JAXA had a new partnership, one formed at the cutting-edge of technology, that would hopefully make the impossible possible. Tiger Corporation, renowned for its stainless steel vacuum insulation and heat control tech most commonly used to keep your drinks hot/cold on your way to work, was commissioned by JAXA to create a vacuum insulation container that could withstand the rigorous conditions of space and the return back to Earth.
"The double-walled, vacuum container (Tiger developed) for this mission had to maintain the temperature inside the container at 4 °C ± 2 °C (39.2 °F ± 3.6 °F) over the course of four or more days and protect the container from the enormous 40G impact when landing in the ocean upon returning to Earth," explained Keiji Nakai, who is the manager of the Product Development Group (3rd section) at Tiger, in a recent email interview with Matt Williams, an astronomy writer for Universe Today’s Guide to Space, which he also curates.
The November 2018 return mission was a success. The same technologies Tiger relies on to create stainless steel thermal bottles had preserved the critically sensitive samples, despite the odds.
JULY 2021
What Tiger’s Tech Means for the Future
“Space is the most challenging environment that humans have ever encountered,” says cosmologist Paul Sutter in an interview with Tiger. Sutter is a research professor in astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University, New York, and a guest researcher at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. “It’s far more difficult than any environment here on Earth. First off, there is no air — it is a vacuum. So that makes it intrinsically dangerous and fragile. Anything you put up in space has to be robust to survive that kind of environment.”
Building a container on Earth that can maintain the required temperatures is one thing, notes Sutter, but to get it to return from space back to Earth is a whole other challenge.
“When something is in orbit around the Earth, it’s traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour,” explains Sutter, “and then you have to bring it down to the ground, which is not traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. That’s a big difference. When these spacecraft land, when they crash into the ocean, they hit with a force equivalent of a head-on, full-speed car crash.”
Designing a container that could protect its cargo — especially very fragile cargo — then keep it at a stable temperature, while making it strong enough to withstand such an impact, was an incredible achievement. In addition, Tiger had to make the container as light as possible.
“Lightness is critical for space,” says Sutter, “because it costs thousands of dollars for every pound of material that we send into space. So it’s easy to build strong things, but it’s very, very difficult to build strong, lightweight containers. And this particular container had to weigh no more than 22 pounds. It’s insane to think about.”
The Next Mission
After the success of their first partnership, Tiger and JAXA are collaborating again. This summer, a new container will be delivered to the ISS on SpaceX’s CRS-22 spacecraft. This time, the requirements for the container were: it must maintain a temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit ± 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 12 days, while weighing about 6.6 pounds. And here’s the kicker: the container must be reusable and able to withstand multiple trips to and from space.
““The ability to reuse materials is one of the keys to enabling more sustained spaceflight,” says Sutter. “Everything from launch vehicles to these sample return containers — the more you can reuse it, the cheaper it becomes, and the cheaper it becomes, the more easily accessible space becomes.”
“Advancements in until recently unfathomable technology like Tiger’s smaller, lighter and more durable containers will have countless consumer, commercial and industrial applications,” writes Williams. “This research is leading to advances in the field of medicine and the development of new cures and medicines. These include transportation solutions for medical samples and reagents that require storage under strict temperature conditions.
“It could also lead to new applications for thermal management in electric and hybrid cars. But perhaps the most interesting application is in the development of next-generation building materials that could provide high levels of insulation in extreme environments such as Antarctica, where research stations need to conserve heat—and even on the Moon and Mars!"
The Future is Bright
The potential applications of Tiger’s vacuum insulation technology are limitless, supporting cutting-edge fields in every industry, leading humankind toward a dynamic, sustainable future. So, too, will the protein samples JAXA is sending to the ISS this summer.
“Our biological experiments in space have come a long way,” says Sutter. “Half a century ago, we were sending dogs and chimpanzees into space just to see what would happen. And now, we’re growing and forming proteins in zero gravity, we’re examining cellular structures and allowing organisms to grow and develop in zero gravity.”
The results of this research go in two very important directions. First, unlocking the secrets to maintaining human life over long periods of time in space is crucial to our potential future lives in space. By conducting these kinds of experiments at the ISS with proteins and cells, we can examine how life operates at a microscopic level in zero gravity, which can potentially lead to a better understanding of how to live and work in space.
The second important direction is even more complex and tied to Tiger’s technology. This cutting-edge technology provides expanded opportunities to retrieve space experiment samples, such as protein crystals which would contribute to new drag design, that could have a crucial impact on the space exploration of the future.
In conjunction with JAXA and Technosolver, Tiger’s containers open up powerful new pathways for innovation and technology, with benefits that could potentially change all of our lives. So, the next time you pour your morning coffee into one of Tiger’s insulated thermal bottles, consider how amazing it is that your drink shares a little bit of the same technology that will drive human expansion into outer space, to other planets, galaxies and beyond.
To learn more about Tiger Corporation’s innovating technology, visit tiger-corporation-us.com/space
“Lightness is critical for space, because it costs thousands of dollars for every pound of material that we send into space. So it’s easy to build strong things, but it’s very, very difficult to build strong, lightweight containers.
"
Space is the most challenging environment that humans have ever encountered,”
"
“Lightness is critical for space, because it costs thousands of dollars for every pound of material that we send into space. So it’s easy to build strong things, but it’s very, very difficult to build strong, lightweight containers.
"
Half a century ago, we were sending dogs and chimpanzees into space just to see what would happen. And now, we’re growing and forming proteins in zero gravity.
"