Pathfinder technology demonstrator CubeSat (Credit: NASA)

NASA has selected 10 CubeSat-related projects for funding under its most recent round of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects. The space agency will enter into negotiations with the proposers for Phase II contracts worth up to $750,000 apiece over two years.

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NASA’s STMD is spearheading work on small spacecraft such as these two Nodes satellites. The Nodes spacecraft were taken to the International Space Station (ISS) in late 2015 via the fourth Orbital ATK cargo mission. Nodes will be deployed into low-Earth orbit from the ISS in early 2016 and test new network capabilities for operating swarms of spacecraft in the future. (Credit: NASA)

NASA has selected seven projects focused on CubeSats for continued development under the space agency’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II program.

The projects are either focused directly on CubeSats or have applications to the small satellites. The list includes:

• Tendeg, LLC, Louisville, Colo: ROC-Rib Deployable Ka-Band Antenna for Nanosatellites
• ExoTerra Resource, LLC. Littleton, Colo.: Cubesat SEP Power Module
• Composite Technology Development, Inc., Lafayette, Colo.: Electric Potential and Field Instrument for CubeSat (EPIC)
• Spectral Sciences, Inc., Burlington, Mass.: Electrospray Propulsion Engineering Toolkit (ESPET)
• , LLC, Saline, Mich.:  Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing for Capillary Heat Transfer Devices and Integrated Heat Exchangers
• Applied Material Systems Engineering, Inc., Schaumburg, Ill.: Innovations for the Affordable Conductive Thermal Control Material Systems for Space Applications
• Pioneer Astronautics, Lakewood, Colo.: Nitrous Ethane-Ethylene Rocket with Hypergolic Ignition.

Summaries of the projects follow.

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