Astronauts on the International Space Station have transformed their high-flying laboratory into a new kind of launch pad for tiny satellites in a bid to boost student interest and access to space.

This month, the space station's Expedition 33 crew launched five tiny Cubesats, each only a few inches wide, using a small satellite orbital deployer from Japan's space agency JAXA. They were the first Cubesat satellites ever launched from the International Space Station, coming 2 1/2 years after NASA announced the CubeSat program.

"This was a learning experience for everyone," said Andres Martinez, the NASA Ames project manager for one of the satellites.

The cubesats were launched from the station's Japanese Kibo laboratory on Oct. 4, which also marked the 55th anniversary of the world's first satellite launch in 1957 that placed Russia's Sputnik 1 in orbit and ushered in the Space Age. [Photos: Tiny Satellites Launch from Space Station]

"Fifty-five years ago we launched the first satellite from Earth. Today we launched them from a spacecraft," space station commander Sunita Williams of NASA said on launch day to mark the moment. "Fifty years from now, I wonder where we'll be launching them from."

The JAXA satellite-deploying device arrived at the station aboard a Japanese cargo ship in July. Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide placed the deployer, which is about the size of a small rabbit cage, into a small airlock in the Kibo lab. Then, the astronaut sealed the airlock, opened it up to space, and commanded the station's Kibo robotic arm to pick up the deployer and bring it outside for satellite deployment.

All told, the procedure took only four hours of astronaut time with no spacewalk required.

"If you can imagine, deploying satellites from station can be quite risky," Martinez said. "We were going through that whole experience of conducting analysis to ensure this would be something safe to do from station, not only from the point of deployment but also taking up the satellites inside station."

Small satellite evolution One of the cubesats launched from the space station was TechEdSat, a 10-centimeter-wide (3.9 inches) satellite that Martinez oversaw. Students at San Jose State University were responsible for most of the design and development work.

The students are operating a ground station where they will be able to listen to signals from TechEdSat. The satellite periodically sends out packets of data with information about its temperature, orbit and other parameters explaining its environment in space. The project cost about $30,000, excluding labor and launch costs.

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Space station opens cubesat launch pad