At the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) 2012 in Palo Alto, California, XCOR Aerospace announced that EMXYS of Spain, Texas A and M's Space Engineering Research Center, and the Planetary Science Institute have joined XCOR's payload processing sales channel for the Lynx suborbital vehicle.

The new members of the XCOR team will provide services to the research, scientific, educational, engineering, and medical markets that are using the XCOR Lynx suborbital reusable launch vehicle for experiments and investigations.

They join XCOR's existing payload integration channel partners including: the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio and Boulder, NanoRacks of Washington DC, Spaceflight Services of Tukwila, Washington, Space Expedition Curacao, Yecheon Astro Space Center of South Korea, Cosmica of France, and African Space Institute in South Africa.

The payload integrators will sell Lynx research flight services and assist in creating standardization in research hardware for the suborbital market.

"We are very excited to have assembled this incredibly capable team of payload integrators to service the worldwide suborbital research market," said Andrew Nelson, XCOR Chief Operating Officer and Vice President for Business Development, "and we will be adding to this capable team in the coming months and years."

Each payload integration specialist firm will help facilitate and provision flight services on the Lynx by ensuring that end users understand the packaging, environmental, safety, operational flight profile(s) and interface (physical, electrical and data) requirements of the Lynx for both automated experiments not requiring user intervention during flight, and those experiments when the scientist accompanies the payload to the edge of space.

The integrators will provide a variety of additional value added services depending on their individual service offering and customer needs, including, but not limited to fabrication, test and qualification of experiments for the Lynx environment.

XCOR will be responsible for:
(1) developing and periodically updating the Lynx interface control document, payload user's guide and other payload related processes and procedures in consultation with the payload integration specialists, end customers and regulators;

(2) operating an annual Lynx payload user's group conference to solicit feedback and promulgate best practices across the payload integrators network and user community;

(3) addressing any specific non-standard needs identified by payload integration specialists and their customers such as special flight trajectories or unique vehicle integration needs;

(4) any special licensing or regulatory actions pertaining to the flight; and

(5) with the integration specialist and customer, performing a final safety and pre-flight review meeting before the mission is flown and a de-briefing of the mission after flight.