The Arlington, Va.-based NSF's interest in CubeSats stems from a recommendation in the June 2006 "Report of the Assessment Committee for the National Space Weather Program — an interagency initiative to speed improvement of space weather services."

One of the report's recommendations emphasized that agencies involved in space weather work should look into the feasibility of using micro-satellites with miniaturized sensors to provide cost-effective science and operational data sources for space weather applications such as: improving understanding of space weather, helping predict conditions in the space environment and measuring the physical processes that affect the state of the sun and solar wind, as well as impacts they have upon Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and upper atmosphere.