“We planned for a minimum of six months’ operation, but ended up with 22 months, a very good return on investment – thanks partly to COVID-19-related delays on deliveries to the ISS, but also because our hardware and software held up well,” says Emmanuel.

“Control of CryptIC was routed through Space Applications Services in Brussels, the company providing the ICE Cubes service. We had some sporadic service interruptions, but overall operations went well. The payload could be overseen from anywhere, nearly anytime, using a laptop with a VPN.”