The United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint Boeing-Lockheed Martin venture providing rocket launch services to the USA government, uses the Russian RD-180 rocket engines to power the Atlas V launch vehicles into space.
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The launch will take place on Thursday, October 8 at 8:49 a.m. The 13 CubeSats will be carried aloft by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
Of the 13 CubeSats, four were sponsored by NASA, one was funded by NASA and developed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and eight were sponsored by NRO. The agency hasn’t released any details about the payload.
The Thursday launch is the 101st mission that ULA will undertake since its formation in 2006. The NOSS system now requires just two spacecraft to accomplish the same objective. “Our ultimate goal is to promote small spacecraft as a paradigm shift for NASA and the larger space community”.
“The NRO recognizes the utility of CubeSats as a cost-effective way of exploring new technology and concepts of operation”, said Meagan Hubbell, deputy chief of the NRO’s CubeSat program office. The mission launching tomorrow will use the CubeSats in a battery of technological demonstrations and tests.
Then there are these five other NRO cubesats that will demonstrate new “software-defined” radio communications. “CubeSats are a great way to inspire innovation and cool science”.
BisonSat is the first cubesat to be built by students at a Native American tribal college; it was designed at Salish Kootenai College, which is located on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.
University and high school students have built and flown dozens of CubeSats over the past 12 years.
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AMSAT Fox-1 was developed by the Maryland-based Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. and features an amateur radio FM voice repeater that will provide easy portable satellite communications opportunities for amateur radio operators worldwide.
