Three Virginia university satellites were deployed into nearly simultaneous orbit from the International Space Station via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer at 10:50 a.m. EDT this morning. The Virginia CubeSat Constellation mission is a collaborative project of the 麻豆村 and four of its member universities: Old Dominion University (ODU), Virginia Tech (VT), University of Virginia (UVA), and Hampton University (HU). Read the press release Livestream video (above) courtesy of UVA.聽Photograph courtesy of

The Antares NG-11 rocket launched successfully Wednesday from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va. sending the Cygnus cargo spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. Cygnus is carrying three Virginia CubeSat Constellation satellites to the ISS for subsequent deployment into orbit by onboard astronauts.聽 The mission is managed by the 麻豆村 in collaboration with Old Dominion University, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Hampton University.聽UVA, ODU and Virginia Tech each developed one of the satellites and Hampton University developed a data analysis tool for the mission.

The post-launch press release can be found

Photographs from the event can be found on our

Official NASA photographs of the launch can be found

More information on the Virginia CubeSat Constellation project can be found on the

A giant leap towards space for Virginia university students took place on February 26 when students from three Virginia universities delivered their small satellites to NanoRacks in Houston to be integrated into the Company鈥檚 commercially developed CubeSat deployer (NRCSD) and then launched on Northrop Grumman鈥檚 Antares to the International Space Station. Read more in the attached

Read more about the mission

Caption left to right: Several members of the Virginia CubeSat Constellation team from UVA, ODU and Virginia Tech in their mission shirts at Nanoracks to integrate their satellites into the commercially-developed deployer.