The Japanese HTV-3 cargo ship that docked this morning at the International Space Station carried along a small, CubeSat satellite that will be among the first nano-satellites to be deployed from the space station via the JAXA satellite launcher.
NanoRacks’ customer FPT University of Hanoi, Vietnam, has spent years building their educational satellite and it joins three Japanese organizations and NASA Ames, along with NanoRacks, in being part of this first generation of JAXA-deployed small sats.
NanoRacks is the first company to have navigated the safety systems of NASA and JAXA for deployment of small satellites. We believe that the robustness of the International Space Station is now becoming apparent to a wider cross-section of the space community.
The station is can be utilized as a research laboratory, small satellite deployment platform and test bed for advanced sensors and electronics, as well as a kicking off point to move beyond low-earth orbit.
NanoRacks is committed to being a leader in all of these space station commercial services.
Deployment of the satellites is planned for later this year.