Some of the small cubesat craft that were carried to the International Space Station on 24 August 2015 by the HTV-5 cargo craft have now been released into orbit. First to be ejected from the JEM module airlock were the GOMX-3 and AAUSAT 5 tracking communications technology test space craft which were released on 5 October 2015. On 6 October, four of the Flock 2B imaging cubesats were released in sequential pairs (numbers 01-08). On the 7 October Flock 2B-09 and Flock-010 were released.
Two of the spacecraft carried by HTV-5, S-Cube and Serpens, had earlier been released by a J-SSOD deployer on the Kibo robot arm on 17 September 2015.
A full listing of release times is available here.
While cubesats are being “bunged” out of the hatch, astronauts of course take a more measured pace. On 28 October two astronauts performed a spacewalk to catch up on unfinished business. Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly along with Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren performed a 7 hour 16 minute spacewalk starting at 1203 GMT on 28 October 2015 with a full schedule of work including applying thermal cover on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, putting grease on a number of components in one of the latching ends of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, and rigging work to rig power and data system cables for a new “commercial” docking port. Even with this busy work schedule, astronaut Scott Kelly still had time for a selfie. On 2 November the International Space Station celebrated 15 years of continuous human presence in space.
