Dnepr launch failure destroys 14 CubeSats

Unfortunately, even the world's most reliable launch vehicles have to fail sometime. That was the case yesterday in Kazakhstan—the Dnepr rocket carrying a Belarussian remote sensing satellite, three microsatellites, and 14 CubeSats crashed shortly after launch. CubeSats are simple little satellites that fit in a 10cm cube. Because they're small, they're low cost ways for universities to participate in space programs—costing roughly as much as a new car—and they fit as secondary payloads on larger launches, in this case, the remote sensing satellite. I was paying attention to this launch because University of Illinois was launching their first satellite, ION1 on that mission. Better luck next time with ION2...

Here are the participating CubeSats...

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