The Japanese cargo craft HTV-4 (Kounotori-4) was sent on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard an H-2B launch rocket launched from the Tanegashima launch site in Japan at 1948 GMT on 3 July. Apart from stores and spare parts, the JAXA-operated HTV-4 carried a small taking robot called Kirobo for use inside the space station and a variety of cubesats.
TechEdSat 3 is a 3U cubesatdeveloped by San Jose State University, the University of Idaho and NASA’s Ames Research Center to test the Exobrake drag-inducing deorbit system. The Ardusat-1 and Ardusat-X are test 1U cubesats for the US firm Nanosatisfi LLC. The PicoDragon subcubesat for Vietnam was built by a consortium including the University of Tokyo, the Vietnam National Satellite Center and IHI Aerospace. It will be used to produce images of Earth and will be used for communications experiments. All the cubesats are to be released from the space station some months after docking has taken place.
