Colorado Space Grant Consortium
NASA will launch small research satellites for several universities as part of the agency’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNA, mission. The satellites are manifested as an auxiliary payload on the Taurus XL launch vehicle for NASA’s Glory mission, planned for liftoff in February 2011. Colorado’s satellite is named Hermes. Its mission is to improve CubeSat communications through the on-orbit testing of a high data-rate communication system that will allow the downlink of large quantities of data.