The “Flock” of 28 Dove 3U-cubesats which were launched on the Cygnus-Orb 1 cargo spacecraft have begun to be released from the International Space Station. The first batch of 16 Dove satellites were loaded into eight nanoracks (two Doves on each) which were then placed on the Multi-purpose Experiment Platform on a slide in the Japanese Kibo Japanese Experimental Module (JEM) airlock. This was then moved outside into space. So far six of the imaging Dove satellites operated by Planetlabs have been released, two at a time. The first two pairs were released on 11 January 2014, and, at the time of writing a second pair were released on 12 January.
The detail on the information above was gleaned from Jonathan McDowell’s space website: http://planet4589.org/space/jsr/latest.html
