…next round of cubesat deployments begins on ISS

A new set of cubesats will be released tomorrow, December 19th, 2016.

For the deployment, the Japanese robotic arm moves the deployer to a specific position to ensure the satellites depart on a safe trajectory with no risk of re-contact with ISS on any subsequent orbits after which drag will have separated ISS and the much smaller CubeSats.
Here is a list of the CubeSats on Japan’s payload manifest, with descriptions offered by JAXA :

AOBA-Velox 3 – from the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, will evaluate the performance of a pulsed plasma thruster
TuPOD – from the Italian company GAUSS, will attempt deployment of two daughter nanosatellites from Brazilian and U.S. builders
ITF-2 – from the University of Tsukuba, will connect amateur radio users
STARS-C – from Shizuoka University, will attempt to extend a tether between two 1U CubeSats
WASEDA-SAT 3 – from Waseda University, will also deploy a “film-type” de-orbiting device and project an image onto the film surface using a micro-miniature projector

STARS Mother CW beacons

15:06 UTC

hello, world. m3 98423f3f m5 fffff5ff  hello, world. m3 a1434340 m5 ffffe5ff  hello, world. m3 c83c3f41 m5 ffffe5ff
hello, world. m3 c83f3e41 m5 ffffe0ff  hello, world. m3 c63f3e3e m5 ffffe7ff  hello, world. m3 b23c3d3e m5 ffffdfff

RSSI                 :  89.0    
Temperature 1        :  59.75   C
Temperature 2        :  59.21   C
Temperature 3        :  58.67   C
Solar Cell Current   :  2.02    mA
Solar Cell Voltage   :  15.02   V
Total System Current :  5.61    mA
Total Voltage        :  15.02   V

stars_temp