Experiment

Successful deployment of five "BIRDS project" CubeSats from the "Kibo"

On July 7, 2017, from 5:45 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. , a total of five "BIRDS project" CubeSats were successfully deployed from the Japanese Experiment Module "Kibo".

Deployments of CubeSats (Credit: JAXA/NASA)

The Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite project acronym as "BIRDS project" is a international joint development and operations project of CubeSats. Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan and Asian-African Nations are participated this project. These five CubeSats are first round of project and called BIRDS 1.

Joint Global Multi Nation Birds（Kyushu Institute of Technology press-release）

At the Tsukuba Space Center (TKSC), the personnel concerned of this project or countries are monitored and applauded the successful deployment.

Personnel concerned monitoring the deployments (Credit: JAXA)

These five BIRDS project CubeSats were launched on Jun 4, 2017 aboard the Dragon CRS-11 (SpX-11) and prepared for pre-deployment works such as setting up of JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) in the "Kibo" module.

Personnel concerned of this project or countries
with J-SSOD and CubeSats (Credit: JAXA)

For more information, please refer to the BIRDS project homepage （Kyushu Institute of Technology）

*About CubeSats:
CubeSat is a microsatellite whose basic size is 10 cubic cm (called 1U), with 2U (20 cm in height) and 3U (30 cm in height) sizes also being available. JAXA's J-SSOD was made in compliance with the CubeSat specification and can deploy a total of 12U at one deployment opportunity. In the near future, the deployment capacity of J-SSOD will be upgraded up to 48U.

*All times are Japan Standard Time (JST)