Our Notable Achievements

In our illustrious history, there have been some standout projects that have shaped our direction and put us on the map as true innovators. Some of these projects have been superseded by new technology, but stand as a testament to the prolific nature of the scientific contributions of our esteemed ownership.

As of Q3 2025, CUA has received:

55 Phase I SBIR/STTR Awards & 29 Phase II SBIR/STTR Awards (Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer)

DUPLEX

Dual Propulsion Experiment

In 2019, NASA selected 14 American companies as partners whose technologies will help enable the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach. CUA was selected as a recipient of one of those 14 NASA Tipping Point partnership awards for the design, fabrication, launch, and in-space demonstration of the Dual Propulsion Experiment (DUPLEX) CubeSat. DUPLEX is a 6U CubeSat that will test two of CUA’s micropropulsion technologies in space to provide flight heritage for these innovative new FPPT and MVP thruster systems.

This flight demonstration will significantly lower the risk for future customers, thereby increasing commercialization potential and dramatically raising the Technology Readiness Level (TRL). Through the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) investment, DUPLEX is fully funded from design to launch. Delivery of the DUPLEX spacecraft to team partner Nanoracks was completed in Q3-2025 and was successfully launched on Sunday, September 14, 2025, via SpaceX's NG-23 Mission. The Cygnus XL cargo craft was successfully docked on September 18th by the ISS crew, and the DUPLEX satellite will be on the ISS until it is launched into orbit sometime around November 1, 2025. This will establish critical flight heritage for these two thrusters.

CUA DUPLEX Deployment

Watch the CUA DUPLEX deployment from the International Space Station that took place at 2:10 AM central standard time on Tuesday, December 2, 2025.

Voyager NRCSD29 Deployments

Voyager Technologies will be deploying seven CubeSats from the International Space Station. The deployments will occur in this livestream

DUPLEX Gallery

Sequential Project

NASA Active Debris Removal SBIR Award

In August 2023, CUA was one of 6 selected for NASA's initiative to address the space challenges of orbital debris and surface dust.

The NASA announcement- "The U.S. economy depends on space for critical infrastructure, from communications and financial exchanges to national security, transportation, and climate monitoring. Debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) – created by abandoned vehicle stages, non-functional satellites, and fragments of launched materials – increases costs by forcing spacecraft to maneuver around debris, threatens the safety of astronauts and satellites, and potentially renders entire orbits unusable.

CUA was one of "four technologies selected to address this congestion, through novel deorbiting techniques or commercial services to remediate or repurpose debris:

CU Aerospace (Champaign, Illinois): Fiber-fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster (FPPT) for Active Debris Removal – $2.6 million The company will develop its thruster for small satellite applications, allowing a debris capture mission to make multiple trips, dropping off multiple payloads (up to 180kg) within a five-year timespan. "

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/nasa-selects-small-businesses-for-orbital-debris-surface-dust-tech/

Department of Defense Award

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) VLEO Project

In 2024 CUA received a $3.29 million DARPA contract for the development of an innovative air-propellant pulsed magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster for use in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) missions with altitudes in the atmosphere below 400 km.

This groundbreaking project represents a significant leap forward in spacecraft propulsion technology. The cutting edge pulsed MPD thruster enables a new class of low orbital altitude satellites by offering an airbreathing option with increased efficiency, lifetime, and versatility. Higher power versions of the technology may also help to revolutionize deep space exploration.

Should CU Aerospace (CUA) be selected for a Phase 2 flight mission, the contract award will be expanded for production of flight hardware and mission support.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) VLEO Project

Propellantless Propulsion

CubeSail Project

Initially proposed in 2005, CubeSail, designed by CU Aerospace and the University of Illinois, was a low-cost flight experiment based on the UltraSail concept. This experiment uses two CubeSat satellites to deploy a 20 square meter solar sail, which can play the same role as propellant on a conventional spacecraft. A major advantage of a “propellantless” solar sail is that the need for a relatively massive and expensive propulsive device is avoided. CubeSail mission goals are successful sail deployment, attitude control, and deorbit.

“It is with great regret that we are officially calling an early end to the CubeSail mission, notably before we were ever able to deploy the solar sail. Satellite beacons at the correct frequency were observed post-launch once on December 18, 2018, but not with sufficient signal to noise ratio to demodulate the call sign in the beacons. No further communications were received from CubeSail. After more than 2 years of continued efforts to establish full communication with CubeSail, we sadly came to the foregone conclusion that the satellites irrevocably failed without the possibility of resurrection. While it is uncertain the specific cause, our best assessment is that the radios failed on orbit.

Based upon the state vector initially provided by Rocket Lab after deployment, our best assessment is that CubeSail was Space-Track Object #43853 (“Object E”) which began with an average orbital altitude of 505 km. Space-Track.org lists this object as having decayed and burned up in the atmosphere on 14 December 2022, almost 4 years after launch.

The CubeSail team consisted of roughly 100 engineers, students, and NASA advisors over the course of its lifetime from concept to launch. Our humble thanks go out to all those involved over the years starting from its proposal in 2005. While the CubeSail mission did not ultimately go as planned, we take away a great many lessons learned and the education of countless engineers in this exhilarating, albeit at many times frustrating, field of spaceflight!

ElectricOIL or EOIL

Electric Oxygen Iodine Lasers

Based on research from 2007-2011, members of CU Aerospace invented and demonstrated an exciting variant of the chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) system that draws its power from electrical rather than chemical energy (ElectricOIL or EOIL), thereby improving its safety and mass-scaling characteristics. Additionally, CUA co-invented a variant of the diode-pumped alkali laser (DPAL) called the exciplex-pumped alkali laser (XPAL).

COIL and ElectricOIL are high-power chemical lasers that are unique because of their strong coupling to most materials and their ability to transmit through the atmosphere as well as through common fiber optics. CUA personnel also have decades of experience with older hydrogen-fluoride (HF) and deuterium-fluoride (DF) laser systems.

Applications for gas phase high-energy lasers are primarily tactical and missile defense for the military. The chemical laser technologies remain as the highest performing laser systems in terms of power, beam quality at high power, and demonstrated ability to destroy missiles at a distance. CUA achieved a high level of sophistication with this technology, and while it is still a highly effective solution, the application is not considered commercially viable.

Propulsion Unit for CubeSats (PUC)

The Propulsion Unit for CubeSats or PUC was introduced in 2014 as a effective and compact propulsion system resembling a hockey puck, its .25U profile was well suited for the smaller CubeSats form factors. The all-welded titanium PUC was fully integrated with all necessary propulsion subsystems, including controller, power processing unit, micro-cavity discharge thruster, propellant valves, heaters, sensors, and software. PUC was software-configurable to operate over a wide range of power, thrust, and impulse levels. In recent years PUC was retired and replaced by other technologies that rely on non-caustic but still high performing greener propellants.