The payload bay of the shuttle orbiter is enormous, measuring 18 metres long and 4.6 metres in diameter. What ever the payload or payloads, there is always some room spare in the bay. With this in mind,NASA decided to offer the spare to small organizations so that they could gain access to space at reasonable cost. The programme was called the small self-contained payloads programme, now known as the getaway special (GAS) programme. NASA provides standardized containers in which customers house their payloads. They are located on either side of the payload bay. They carry their own power, control and data-collection instruments and function independently. The first GAS flew on the third shuttle flight (STS-3). It was an ambitious payload put together by Utah State University, incorporating no fewer than 10 experiments! For example, they investigated how microgravity (weightlessness) affected successive generations of fruit flies, duckweed root growth, the growth rate of algae and th
e curing rate of epoxy resins. Since then GAS have been flown on most missions, giving for a few thousand dollars access to space for universities and research organizations not only in the USA but also from around the world.
