KSC-2015-1199

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California– At Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, agency leaders held an Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, or ELaNa, CubeSat briefing to discuss three small research satellites that are being flown as auxiliary payloads on the SMAP mission. More than 100 university students have been involved in the design, development and construction of the CubeSats. Presenting the mission science objectives for the ELaNa CubeSats are George Diller of NASA Public Affairs, Scott Higginbotham, NASA ELaNa-X Mission Manager at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Dave Klumpar, Firebird-II principal investigator and director of the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, Jordi Puig-Sauri, EXOCUBE principal investigator at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, and David Rider, GRIFEX principal investigator at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett