The Vega rocket lifted off at 1000 GMT (5 a.m. EST) from the Guiana Space Center, a South American facility that sits where the Amazon jungle meets the Atlantic Ocean. This is the first launch for the new European launch vehicle. Seven CubeSats were successfully deployed via 3 P-PODs

• Xatcobeo (a collaboration of the University of Vigo and INTA, Spain): a mission to demonstrate software-defined radio and solar panel deployment;
• Robusta (University of Montpellier 2, France): a mission to test and evaluate radiation effects (low dose rate) on bipolar transistor electronic components;
• e-st@r (Politecnico di Torino, Italy): demonstration of an active 3-axis attitude determination and control system including an inertial measurement unit;
• Goliat (University of Bucharest, Romania): imaging of Earth using a digital camera and in-situ measurement of radiation dose and micrometeoroid flux;
• PW-Sat (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland): a mission to test a deployable atmospheric drag augmentation device for de-orbiting CubeSats;
• MaSat-1 (Budapest University of Technology and Economics): a mission to demonstrate various spacecraft avionics, including a power conditioning system, transceiver and onboard data handling;
• UniCubeSat GG (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy):a mission to study the gravity gradient.

Read more at http://spaceflightnow.com/vega/vv01/120213launch/

Links to all of the individual CubeSat home pages can be found at http://www.uk.amsat.org/4180

We would also like to congratulate those behind the first satellites ever for Romania, Hungary, and Poland! http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMWHLWX7YG_index_0.html

Congressional Legislation to Remove Satellites from ITAR

The House of Representatives in the U.S. Senate recently passed a bill, H.R. 3288, with a clause to remove ITAR restrictions on commercial satellites. The specific wording for the purpose of the bill:

To authorize the President to remove commercial satellites and related components
from the United States Munitions List subject to certain restrictions,
and for other purposes.

Full test of the Bill can be found in PDF here:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3288ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3288ih.pdf

Status of the bill:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3288

This bill only pertains to commercial satellites, and does not include scientific or educational in its current form. Make your voices heard and please write to your Representatives for the inclusion of these terms. Removing educational, scientific, and commercial satellites from ITAR control will help foster the international small satellite community.

Representatives Howard Berman, Don Manzullo, Adam Smith, Mike Coffman, Dutch Ruppersberger, Rob Bishop, Gerry Connolly, Jason Chaffetz, and Martin Heinrich introduced the bill, and are the best people to contact regarding updates and changes.

Scheduled Website Maintenance

CubeSat.org will be taken down temporarily this Saturday, December 17, 2011 for scheduled maintenance. We will be down for an undetermined period of time, although we hope to be back online by Monday.

Our mailing list will not be touched, and will be available for communicating with the CubeSat community at large despite the downtime.

Status: Delayed.

We are considering other options, and the downtime may have to wait until after the Holiday Season

On October 28th, 2011 at 2:48 AM Pacific, the Delta II carrying NPP also carried three P-PODs and 6 CubeSats into orbit. All three P-PODs deployed successfully and ground operators around the world are tracking the CubeSats.