Nanoracks CubeSat Deployer

The International Space Station was designed to be used as both a microgravity laboratory, as well as a launch pad for low Earth orbit services.

The Japanese Space Agency's (JAXA) Kibō ISS module includes a small satellite-deployment system called the J-SSOD.

Seeing the emerging market demand for CubeSats, Nanoracks self-funded its own ISS deployer, with the permission of both NASA and JAXA.

Each pre-packed satellite install case is loaded by crewmembers onto the Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform (MPEP) within the JEM habitable volume.

The JEMRMS grapples and maneuvers the MPEP and J-SSOD to a predefined deployment orientation and then jettisons the small CubeSat satellites.

The five CubeSats were deployed successfully on 4 October 2012 by the JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide using the newly installed J-SSOD.

[4] In October 2013, Nanoracks became the first company to coordinate the deployment of small satellites (CubeSats/nanosatellites) from the ISS via the airlock in the Japanese Kibō module.

The mission of F-1 was to "survive" the space environment for one month, measuring temperature and magnetic data while taking low-resolution photos of Earth.

Nanoracks designed, manufactured, and tested the deployer for NASA and JAXA approval to reach the International Space Station.

The Nanoracks CubeSat Deployer was launched on 9 January 2014, on the Orbital Sciences Cygnus CRS Orb-1 mission along with 33 small satellites.