NASA has long been a StickerGiant customer, although none of the stickers we have printed for them have gone to space. That has changed, and we are going to space. NASA came to us with a sticker project for the HICO-RAIDS experiment payload project and a sticker we have printed will be going to the space station.

What does this mean? The International Space Station and the NASA space program has long been dedicated to supporting science with experimental payloads. Organizations are given “payload” on the shuttle and sometimes the space station itself to carry experiments that can run once in space.

One or two of these stickers will be leaving our planet in September 2009.

What is HICO-RAIDS ?

The Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) and the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System (RAIDS), both developed at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), are ready for payload integration following a fast-paced program of development and test. HICO, built by NRL’s Remote Sensing Division, will be the first spaceborne hyperspectral imager optimized for characterization of the coastal environment.

The sticker is a 4-color process sticker printed on a clear vinyl stock with a opaque white backup. This technique produces a sticker with a unique texture and fantastic reproduction quality.