The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has deployed a pair of CubeSats from the International Space Station under a flight demonstration and test initiative. APL said Wednesday it utilized a 60-foot satellite dish to establish a communications link with the two 3U CubeSat units, which were launched from the orbital laboratory via a NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on Jan. 31. The effort is part of the CubeSat Assessment and Test mission, an experiment led by researchers from APL and sponsored by NASA. The CubeSats were brought to the ISS by SpaceX‘s Dragon spacecraft during NASA’s 16th Commercial Resupply Services mission. The two CubeSats contain APL communications equipment.