VIENNA, Sep 26, 2017 -- (UN Information Service) – The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have announced the opening of the third round of the KiboCUBE initiative.

KiboCUBE was launched in September 2015 as a capacity-building initiative between UNOOSA and JAXA to offer developing and emerging countries the opportunity to deploy cube satellites (CubeSats) from the Japanese Kibo module of the International Space Station (ISS).

"At UNOOSA we are very proud of our partnership with JAXA and our joint KiboCUBE initiative. KiboCUBE is a key part of our activities to give developing and emerging countries access to space and its benefits. I appreciate JAXA’s continued support in this triangular approach to enhanced capacity-building for the twenty-first century," said Simonetta Di Pippo, Director of UNOOSA.

Applications for the third round of the KiboCUBE initiative are open to educational or research institutions from developing and emerging countries that are United Nations Member States. Applications close on 31 March 2018.

A team from the University of Nairobi was the successful candidate in the first round of KiboCUBE and is developing its CubeSat to test technologies it has developed for the future launch of a larger earth observation satellite. The team also intends to apply data acquired from its CubeSat deployment for monitoring of agriculture and coastal areas.

A team from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala was selected for the second round of KiboCUBE, and plans to use its CubeSat to test equipment for monitoring the concentration of harmful cyanobacteria (algae blooms) over inland bodies of water.

Information about the application process for the United Nations/Japan Cooperation Programme on CubeSat Deployment from the International Space Station (ISS) Japanese Experiment Module (Kibo), "KiboCUBE", is available at: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/psa/hsti/kibocube.html