CubeSat - Successful Projects

Successful Projects

One of the earliest launches of CubeSats was 30 June 2003 from Plesetsk, Russia, with Eurockot Launch Services's Multiple Orbit Mission. CubeSats were put into a sun-synchronous orbit and included the Danish AAU CubeSat and DTUSat, the Japanese CubeSat XI-IV and CUTE-1, the Canadian Can X-1, and the US triple-CubeSat Quakesat.

On 27 October 2005, a Kosmos-3M launch vehicle launched from Plesetsk carried three CubeSats into orbit on the European Space Agency's Student Space Exploration & Technology Initiative (SSETI) mission. The SSETI Express Satellite student-built satellite was not a CubeSat as it weighed 136 pounds and was the size of a washing machine. The CubeSats that did make orbit on this launch were the Ncube satellite project from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of Tokyo's CubeSat XI-V.

Seven CubeSats were launched 17 April 2007 as secondary payloads on a Dnepr rocket. They included a Colombian project from the students at the Universidad Sergio Arboleda. Their satellite, called Libertad 1, was Colombia's first. The Aerospace Corporation had their AeroCube 2, CP-3 & CP-4 were on board from California Polytechnic State University, and CAPE-1 from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

In a launch coordinated by the Nanosatellite Launch System, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launched CubeSats on April 28, 2008. One was a 3-unit CubeSat (10x10x30 centimeters) named Delfi-C3 from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

On December 8, 2010, several CubeSats were reported to have deployed successfully from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the same one that launched their first Dragon spacecraft on COTS Demo Flight 1.

On October 28, 2011, three PPODs containing six cubesats were placed into orbit along with the NPOESS Preparatory Project satellite aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. This was the second of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellite (ELaNa) missions launched.

Five CubeSats (Raiko, Niwaka, We Wish, TechEdSat, F-1) were placed into orbit from International Space Station on October 4, 2012, as a technology demonstration of small satellite deployment from ISS. They were launched and delivered to ISS as a cargo of Kounotori 3, and the ISS astronaut prepared the deployment mechanism attached to Japanese Experiment Module's robotic arm.