The Canadian Space Agency's CubeSats Initiative for STEM, a project known as CUBICS, is moving ahead toward the manufacturing phase after its design passed final review recently.

Professors and their students are involved in the design, build and launch of satellites as part of CUBICS at nine universities. Ultimately the nine 3U CubeSats are to be deployed next year by Exolaunch, a German launch-services company based in Berlin. The satellites will conduct a number of experiments relevant to amateur radio and utilise the ham spectrum for their command and control. They will also conduct research on wildlife migration, monitor oceanic and atmospheric changes and study radiation-mitigating technologies that can be used in space.The payload will include digipeaters as well as digital and CW telemetry beacons.