NASA Successfully Ejects Nanosatellite from Micro satellite in Space

NASA for the first time effectively ejected a nanosatellite from a free-flying microsatellite. NanoSail-D ejected from the Fast, reasonable, Science and Technology Satellite, FASTSAT, representing the ability to deploy a small cubesat payload from a sovereign microsatellite in space.

Nanosatellites or cubesats are classically launched and deployed from a mechanism called a Poly-PicoSatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD) mounted directly on a launch vehicle. This is the first time NASA has mounted a P-POD on a microsatellite to eject a cubesat.

FASTSAT, prepared with six science and technology demonstration payloads, including NanoSail-D, launched Friday, Nov. 19 at 8:25 p.m. EST from Kodiak Island, Alaska. During launch, the NanoSail-D flight unit, about the size of a loaf of bread, was stowed inside FASTSAT in a P-POD.

"The flourishing ejection of NanoSail-D demonstrates the operational capacity of FASTSAT as a cost-effective independent means of placing cubesat payloads into orbit safely," said Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "With this first step behind us, we have demonstrated we can launch a number of different types of payloads using this common deployment system from an autonomous microsatellite like FASTSAT."