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From left: NASA Kennedy Space Center Public Affairs Officer George Diller; Scott Higginbotham, NASA ELaNa-X Mission Manager Kennedy Space Center, Florida; Dave Klumpar, Firebird-II Principal Investigator Director, Space Science and Engineering Laboratory Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana; Jordi Puig-Sauri, EXOCUBE Principal Investigator California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California; and David Rider, GRIFEX Principal Investigator Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California discuss the planned launch of Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) CubeSats with the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory during a press briefing, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NASA will launch three small research satellites for two universities and JPL. More than 100 university students have been involved in the design, development and construction of the CubeSats that are being flown as auxiliary payloads on the SMAP mission.